Lost Causes
by Tyraa Rane
Summary: Those who enter here never leave. A more-than-mildly AU prequel/interquel to The Walking Dead: Season 2, exploring what life at Howe's was really like for the cast of "400 Days" in the year leading up to "In Harm's Way." This is for those who survived, and what was left of them after William Carver was finished.
1. Rubicon

**Author's Note:** This story exists because—to put it kindly—I saw a lot of missed potential in Howe's and Carver himself, and thought the 400 Days characters' cameos did them a massive disservice. I set out to right that wrong with a series of short stories, and then Howe's grabbed me by the throat and suddenly I had a novel on my hands. Like you do.

To avoid spoilers, I've not included any content-related warnings here or in the summary. Chapters with particularly upsetting or graphic content will contain specific warnings at their start. However, readers should be generally advised that this work contains themes and elements some may find disturbing.

Lastly, to give proper credit, the first line of the summary is taken from A Fine Frenzy's "Rangers."

* * *

 _Lost Causes_

* * *

 **I. Rubicon**

Shel's fingers twitched against the fake leather of the steering wheel, readjusting her grip in a half-hearted attempt to keep herself awake. Ahead, the two-lane road stretched out in a sinuous line as it wove its way through the trees. Only an occasional pothole or some stray debris—which Shel did her best to steer around—broke up the monotony. Over the treetops she caught an occasional glimpse of mountaintops, laced with thin, low-hanging clouds.

To her west the sun had begun to dip below the horizon; more than a few stars peeked out already between scattered clouds. She flicked the RV's headlights on, the prearranged signal, just as she drove past a wobbly highway sign.

 _Pine Creek Pass – 3 miles._

Acting more on automatic pilot than anything else, Shel started to brake, searching in the fading orange light for the turn-off.

The radio in the cupholder beside her squealed once, pulling her attention from the road. "Shel?" Tavia's voice almost didn't cut through the static. "Our lookout just spotted you. The turn's up ahead; you see it?"

As if on cue, the RV's headlights caught the intersection, marked by a stop sign half fallen over into the road. Shel made the turn slowly, listening as a few boxes shifted and slid around behind her. In the passenger seat, Becca turned over in her sleep.

The radio squealed a second time. "Look for the shopping center about a mile down the road. It's on your right. We're in the hardware store. Pull around to the loading dock, and we'll handle it from there." A static-filled pause, and then Tavia signed off with a perfunctory, "We'll see you soon."

"Becca?" Shel risked taking her eyes off the road for a split second, checking to see if her sister was still asleep. "Wake up; we're almost there." A bleary-sounding groan was all she got in return, but that was enough for her. Becca would wake up as soon as they stopped driving. She always did.

As the RV inched down the road, Shel found herself watching the shadows on the roadside, looking for—what, exactly? She couldn't say. All was quiet and nothing moved, save a few late in the season fireflies flitting across the road.

A click from the radio broke her out of her meditative mood. "Tavia?" As they neared their destination, the signal grew steadily stronger. Shel didn't have to strain to hear it anymore. She didn't recognize the man's voice on the other end, either. "Uh, are you still on this channel? My radio's stuck; it won't go to channel one."

Finally, to her right, the trees grew shorter and then dipped away, revealing the empty sea of a parking lot. The strip mall's uneven rooftops lurked at the far end, already half lost in the deepening twilight. The last fingers of sunlight barely stretched above the mountains now.

"Right," said the voice on the radio, punctuating it with a sigh half-full of static. "Guess I'll just go find another radio. Reggie out."

Shel bit her lip to stop a smile. He'd sounded nice enough at least, although it wasn't much of a first impression. Maybe Bonnie had been right. Maybe this would be a good thing, a new beginning. _Hope springs eternal_ , as her mother would've said. _But never let your guard down. Just in case._

She turned into the parking lot, veering around a walker that looked like it had been run over more than once, and recently. Its broken fingers flailed at the RV's tires as they slipped past.

The empty parking lot felt less than welcoming. Only a few cars remained, scattered here and there. Someone had stripped them down to their frames and left them to rust long ago. Weeds sprouted out of cracks in the asphalt and waved to her as the RV passed by. All the strip's smaller stores looked likewise disused and abandoned, their windows shattered and black, open doorways looming.

The hardware store—if she squinted, she could just make out a sign saying _Howe's—_ waited at the northernmost edge of the strip. It at least looked well-fortified, if not exactly the most homey of places. The front entrances were all boarded up and secured, and Shel caught a glimpse of barbed wire as she pulled around to loading dock.

Around the back of the store a few more cars and trucks were parked, neatly arranged with a path just wide enough for an RV or a small truck to squeeze through. Some had been stripped; wheels missing, hoods popped open. Some still looked street-worthy. Wyatt's little yellow rust-bucket of a car, parked at the same slight sideways angle as always, sat near the delivery bay doors. Seeing it somehow calmed the tiny knot of tension that had wrapped itself around her guts.

The loading dock had two doors, high off the ground, meant for loading and unloading semis. A Land Trek moving van was pulled up to the leftmost bay, blocking the closed door. The second bay door stood wide open, and through it she could see flickering candlelight and the faintest hint of movement inside.

Unfamiliar men waited on either side of the door. One held a high beam flashlight, the other a hunting rifle. Only the fact that he kept his gun pointed at the forest behind them and not at the RV itself kept her nerves at ease. The one with the flashlight gestured for her to pull to a stop barely a foot from the open bay door.

He flashed her a quick thumbs up just as she killed the RV's engine. It shut itself off with a rattling sigh as if to say, _well. Here we are._

"For better or for worse," Shel added under her breath, watching the quiet mill of activity. There was a third man up on the roof, peering down at them. He waved, and after a moment's hesitation, Shel waved back. Though she could only see him in silhouette, she thought it might be Russell.

"What are you _doing_?"

Shel nearly jumped clear out of her seat at the sound of Becca's voice. It seemed slow and laced with sleep. "Nothing," she answered, recovering herself with a hint of a grin. "We're here. Come on, grab your stuff."

Becca ignored her, peering forward through the dusty, bug-splattered windshield. "A hardware store?" she mumbled around a yawn.

"Well, at least they'll have plenty of tools, right?"

Becca blinked at her, narrowing her eyes. "Was that some kind of joke?"

Shel was just exhausted enough to start giggling when the RV's door swung open and Tavia stepped inside. Her smile seemed genuine, even if something in her poised, stiff posture reminded Shel of a tour guide about to launch into a tired routine. "Shel. Becca. We're glad you could make it."

"So are we," Shel answered, chuckling. Becca rolled her eyes and yawned again.

"I can imagine." She almost mimicked Becca's yawn, stopping herself at the last second. "I don't mean to rush you, but engine noise brings lurkers out of the woods sometimes. I suggest you grab your things and move quickly. Stan and Tyler will cover you until then, though, so don't worry too much. I'll be waiting just inside; we'll get you some food and to a warm bed as soon as we can. Welcome aboard."

She turned and started back outside, pausing just as the RV door creaked open. "Oh, and your step out here is broken. Watch out for that." Then she was gone again, gesturing to the guards outside—Stan and Tyler, presumably—and talking into her radio at the same time.

"That lady is such a freak," Becca muttered. Shel repressed the urge to sigh.

" _Tavia_ is very nice, and she went out of her way to help us get here." She nudged Becca with her elbow, taking the RV's keys and slipping them into her pocket in the same gesture. "Now get a move on, okay?"

In terms of _things_ , they didn't have much, although Shel was sometimes surprised by how much the group had managed to accumulate in the few months they'd been together. Between her and Becca, they each had a duffel bag of spare clothes and other necessities, which she now pulled out of the cabinet she'd stashed them in. The rest—a few boxes and crates scattered around the floor like a miniature obstacle course—was all foodstuffs and camping gear. Everything that hadn't fit in Wyatt's car, or in other words, almost everything.

"What about this box?" Becca pulled one out from under the dining table and peered inside. Her nose wrinkled. "Ugh, never mind. It's Vince's ratty old shirts. They _stink_."

" _Shoot_ , I meant to give those back before—" Shel cut that thought short with a sigh, worrying her lower lip. "Too late now, I guess."

Becca gave the box an unceremonious kick that sent it skidding back under the table. "We're not keeping them, right?"

"I guess there's no point." Her voice came out unexpectedly hoarse, and she stopped to clear her throat before she continued. "Just leave it be. Maybe...well, maybe someone here can use them."

Her train of thought threatened to spiral off in dark directions, back to Georgia and the camp and an argument she'd been turning over in her head for most of the drive. _This is a place for new beginnings, not dwelling on what you can't change_ , she told herself with a ferocity she only half believed.

To take her mind off it she slung her duffel bag over one shoulder and grabbed a box labeled, in Wyatt's lanky penmanship, _canned shit._ It was, of course, heavier than it looked. She balanced it precariously on one hip as she started down the narrow steps. "Becca, just grab your clothes for now. I'll take care of the rest of the boxes."

As she nudged the RV's door open she turned back, listening for the expected reply—something like _whatever—_ but didn't get one. "Becca, I mean it, some of those boxes are too heavy for you—"

"You look like you could use a hand."

The man's voice, rough and raspy as a gravel road, interrupted her and almost made her jump. Shel turned to see a middle-aged man standing behind her at the foot of what had once been the RV's steps. He was wholly unfamiliar—not one of the two guards Tavia had pointed out—and she had no idea how he'd managed to sneak up behind her. That alone should have been alarming. And yet there was also something in the keen, quiet look in his dark brown eyes, or maybe in the ghost of the smile on his lips, that conspired to make her drop her guard.

"We've got it," she said instead, with all pleasantness. "But thank you."

The man's smile turned wry. Something in his craggy features reminded her of a hawk. "Now what sort of host would I be if I didn't offer the lady a hand?" He held his hand out as he said it, to drive the point home. A scar arching along his pinky and ring finger caught her eye. It looked like something made with the thin edge of a knife. "If it helps, I promise I don't bite."

Shel stifled a laugh. "Is this the part where I make a crack about thinking chivalry was dead?"

"If it makes you feel better. Come on now."

His smile hadn't changed a whit. And yet his tone had changed, just enough to make her feel like he was mocking her. Or maybe calling her like one would a dog.

 _Well_ _then. H_ _ere's to new beginnings_ , she thought, tamping her annoyance down until it was just a faint twitch in her cheek. It was late anyway, and she was tired from the drive; the odds were she'd just misread him. Or so she told herself as she reached out to take his hand. The skin of his palm was rough against hers, his grip unsurprisingly strong. He held her steady as she made the jump over the RV's broken steps to the cracked asphalt.

"Thanks."

As soon as she had both feet planted on the ground, he let her hand drop. "You're welcome." He looked her up and down, just once. "Came to see what all the fuss was about," he continued. His voice had a hint of a warm, lilting Southern accent, somewhere under the rough edges. "Guess you're the last of Tavia's new arrivals."

"Shel. My sister Becca's just inside."

"William Carver, but—hell, call me Bill. Everyone does." That ghost of a smile was back, this time with a note of pride. "I guess you could say I run this place."

The RV door creaking open behind them distracted Shel before she could reply. Becca stood at the top of the steps, yawning, her head tilting as she studied Carver. "Who the hell are you?"

" _Becca_ ," Shel hissed through clenched teeth, for all the good she knew it would do.

For his part, Carver didn't seem much phased—he paused only to scratch at a hint of stubble on his chin before he offered Becca his hand. "Name's Bill. Like I was telling your sister. You need a hand, Becca?"

Becca glanced first at him, then his outstretched hand, and then finally at Shel, her expression incredulous. Shel started to mouth _be polite_ , but Becca interrupted her with a terse, "Nope." With that she made the brief leap down to the pavement, her duffel bag bouncing behind her. "Shel, c'mon. It's creepy out here."

Carver's glance shifted from them to the nearby woods, lost almost entirely now in deepening twilight. "You've got that about right, little lady. All sorts of men and monsters roaming out there, these days. You'd best get inside." His grin bordered on wolfish, an effect so comical Shel had to assume he'd done it deliberately, trying to spook her.

It reminded her in some distant way of Roman, before things with him had turned bad. He'd spent ages making up ghost stories, trying to scare Becca, until she had finally punched him in the arm and yelled at him to stop. He'd worn the small bruise like some sort of badge of honor, showing it off to Stephanie or Shel herself every chance he got.

 _Yes, Roman, you got beat up by a twelve year old,_ Stephanie had shot back. _Very brave._

Becca at least showed no inclination to punch Carver. She jutted out her chin instead. "I'm not scared of walkers."

Carver chuckled. The sound was so quiet and low it made the hair on Shel's arms stand on end. "Me either. I tell you what—it's the men that spook me."

Somehow, Shel didn't think this man was afraid of anything much.

"Let's go, Becca," she murmured, shifting the box of canned goods to her other hip. It grew heavier with every passing second. "Stick close to me, okay?"

"I'll walk you in." Carver had already started back towards the building, though he seemed more intent on studying the RV. He nudged one of the tires with the heel of his boot as he passed. "Heard from your friends you had a bit of a bumpy ride."

"The engine kept overheating." Shel found it something of a struggle to keep pace with him, a firm hold of the box, and a wary eye on her surroundings all at once. "It's been doing that for months now. I fixed it, but...well, for a while I thought we'd be walking here. We owe Tavia and—what's his name, George?—for hanging back to guide us in. Oh, and we've still got your spare radio. Becca, run back and—"

"Stan'll pick it up later," Carver interrupted. His attention sounded like it had drifted somewhere else.

"We brought supplies, too." A faint wind had started now that the sun had set, and it carried a subtle, quiet chill on its edge. Shel wished she'd put on her jacket. "Camping gear, some food and clothes. I don't know if Tavia told you."

Now she had his attention again. "She didn't. We're much obliged." Carver passed the guards with a nod and a few faint words of acknowledgment. When it came to the foot-high step up into the building, he made it in a single agile bound, though he had to lean on the door frame for support. There he paused. "Now that you're here we'll take that old junker off your hands, too. Our men'll do what they can with it, or we'll just strip it for spare parts. Standard procedure. I assume that's all right with you."

 _Assuming you're going to stay_ , she thought his words suggested. Again she couldn't quite shake the feeling that Carver, his stare narrowing on her, was weighing her responses very carefully.

"I'm sure your men and I can talk that over in the morning," she answered, watching him just as warily. "But I'd like to hang on to the keys for now."

"I suppose you can at that." His answer was as non-committal as hers, and his dark eyes sparkled with some hidden amusement. She had a feeling she might have just passed whatever test he'd put forward for her. The idea didn't enthuse her much.

As he spoke, he held his hand out to help her up into the building. This time she didn't hesitate, taking his hand and letting him pull her into the warm, candlelit bustle of the loading bay.

"It's a real pleasure to meet you, Shel," he added as the night receded behind them. "Your sister too. I think you'll both do nicely here."


	2. Hertzog

**Notes:** This chapter has a mild case of Troy being...well, himself. It's fairly tame by his standards (at least this time), but some readers may find his sexually harassing behavior upsetting.

* * *

 **2\. Hertzog**

Troy paused at the intersection, looked around, and spat on the cracked pavement. "It's too quiet. I don't fucking like it."

Russell, a few feet behind him and weaving around an overturned Volvo, didn't disagree. This was his first trip into the town of Pine Creek Pass proper, and he hoped it would be his last for a while.

Before the end of the world it had been some hybrid of tourist trap and dying coal town. The half closest to Howe's, feeding off the Blue Ridge Parkway and some Civil War battlefield, was a modern if modest North Carolina town. That half had already been picked clean by scavengers, not all of them from Howe's. Troy led them through there in double-time; _no point staying_ , he'd said, _unless you wanna play bait._

Then they crossed the train tracks, so overgrown with kudzu and other weeds Troy had had to hack a path through with a machete. Then Russell supposed you'd be forgiven for thinking you were in a different town entirely. Or just a different time. Streets narrowed and buildings loomed on either side, flat storefronts built from yellow brick without a pause for breath between them. At intersections, or just where one building shot up taller than its neighbors, painted-on advertisements peeled away in the harsh fall sunlight. _Pine Creek Electric. Floyd's Family Diner, Open 24/7. Now serving pecan pie! Hertzog Bros. General Store, Est. 1849_.

The town sat perched along the sides of a mountain pass. Streets tilted at all manner of steep angles, now cracked and pitted from disrepair. Debris from blown out windows and looters' leftovers littered every street, at least where abandoned cars didn't block them off altogether. Almost every intersection was a blind corner. And on a day like today, with barely a hint of wind, the entire town smelled like dust and an undercurrent of rot.

The first time Russell had been on night watch, he'd had to spend half the night listening to Tyler and Lowell swapping stories about the coal mine on the far side of town. How it was still full of rock slides and gas pockets. And walkers—though they said _lurkers_ , which had a more sinister edge—that used to be coal miners, their lamps still flickering away on top of their dead, rotting skulls.

Stupid kids' stories, he'd thought then… or maybe some kind of attempt to haze the new guard. Now he was beginning to think those stories wouldn't be out of place on this side of town.

"Don't fucking like it," Troy grumbled again, each word punctuated by a crunch of glass under his boots.

Beside him, Daphne—the third member of today's little band—rolled her eyes as she hopped over an open sewer grate. "Now what's your problem, Troy?"

Daphne Munroe was nineteen, a few months older than Russell, and the niece of Vera, who was what passed for the camp cook. Thin as a rail, Daphne shared her aunt's short height—the top of her head only reached Russell's chin—and hair the color of fresh straw. Daphne kept hers longer than Vera's, in a tight braid that swayed back and forth when she walked.

She also had the most striking pale green eyes Russell had ever seen. They stood out amid the freckles that ran across her pale cheeks and up over the bridge of her nose.

Troy didn't answer her, his dark brown eyes narrowing as they passed by one of the street's few alleyways. He raised his AK, poked it into the shadows until he was satisfied the alley was empty, and then kept walking. "Whole plan of your sucks tit." Spat into the street again.

Russell didn't know Troy well, but he could say already that his personality made a good match for his pinched—it was tempting to say _rat-like—_ and scowling face.

"That's nice," Daphne said in the same tone Russell's gram used to use for sayings like _bless your dumb heart_.

"Town's gotta be crawling with bandits."

"Mm-hm." Daphne glanced back at Russell over her shoulder, affecting an overly dramatic roll of her eyes. Her thin lips quirked into a grin when he rolled his eyes right back.

"Or worse." Troy kept carrying on as if he hadn't heard her, or more likely just didn't care. "And we're just out here on a fuckin' _stroll_ in the middle of the fuckin' street like hey, come shoot us and eat us!"

This last came out as a yell that bounced back to them out of broken store windows. Russell cringed and tightened his grip on his pistol. Somehow he couldn't shake the feeling that in every empty storefront they passed by, something or someone stared back.

Russell hadn't really passed through a town since leaving Steve. Already he missed the open countryside.

"And you make real fuckin' good bait, Daph," Troy concluded with another hasty scowl at his surroundings. Russell wondered if he knew _fucking_ wasn't meant to be used as an adjective. "You and the dumbass new kid. Bandits around here'll get a real kick out of him."

"Man, shut up." Somewhere in the back of Russell's brain a note of warning sounded. Making an enemy out of the head of the camp guards wasn't what he'd had in mind for his first week here. Then again, from what he'd seen, Troy wasn't winning any popularity contests with the rest of the place either. "If anything's gonna bring bandits in, it's you yelling."

"Look, asshole, you ain't—"

Daphne grabbed Troy's arm then, using him for balance as she hopped over a fallen telephone pole. That seemed to distract him well enough to derail his train of thought. "Isn't that why you're here to protect us, Troy?"

Troy's brow furrowed. "Well, yeah—"

"And didn't you and Johnny clear the bandit nests out of here last week? How many did you say you killed again? Six?"

"Nah, Johnny got six." Troy's chest had puffed out with pride. Russell bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from laughing. "I got more like ten or twelve."

Daphne tilted her head back towards Russell again, her voice dropping into a stage whisper. "Y'know, the body count gets higher every time he tells that story." She giggled, which was a sound so infectious even he managed a smile. "Hank still swears he only got three."

"Hank needs his fuckin' eyes checked," Troy growled. He kicked an empty beer can down the road as he said it; it made a few rattling bounces before it came to rest in a pothole.

Daphne grinned, flicking her long braid at him. It glanced off his cheek and at least managed to draw a smirk. "I'm just teasing, Troy. Ease up."

Russell didn't think that would soothe Troy's ego any. He hunched his shoulders, made a vow to stay out of arguments from then on, and kept walking.

* * *

Daphne led them through a twisting maze of streets to a small greenhouse and garden shop on the edge of downtown. It was a squat, one story building of tan bricks that looked like it had fallen straight out of the 1970s. Its closest neighbor, some kind of old electronics shop, loomed over it, its windows all boarded up. The windows on the garden shop were all shattered inward, and the front door loomed wide like a gaping maw. The inside of the building was pitch black, even in the mid-day sunlight.

Troy spat again, right in front of Russell's shoes, drawing him up short. "Man, what the fuck—"

"Hold up, assholes," Troy grumbled over him. "I gotta clear this place first. Don't want any lurkers taking a bite outta your pretty ass, right?" This last he aimed straight at Daphne, with a long, leering look Russell did his best to ignore.

Daphne seemed to have missed the innuendo. " _Okay_ , Troy. Go have fun. We'll keep an eye out for any bandits you missed."

"Didn't miss any." He strode through the open front door, disappearing with a crunch of glass and a few muttered profanities.

Russell found himself scanning nearby rooftops and half-boarded up windows. A crow watched them from the burnt out roof of the gas station on the corner, its head tilting first one way, then the other. Daphne was nudging broken glass out of the doorway with the toe of her boots and whistling under her breath.

"Is Troy always like that?" Russell asked when the quiet finally got to be too much.

Daphne paused mid-step, quirking her eyebrow at him. "Dunno. Guess you sorta get used to 'im." Her Appalachian accent made her words rise and fall like rolling hills. "He's all bark, though, if that's what you're worried about. Not a whole lot of bite."

"I'm not scared of him," he shot back. The crow took off from its perch, scolding them once before it flapped away south.

Now both of Daphne's eyebrows had arched upwards. "Didn't mean to say you were. Just...he don't mean anything by it. Tell him to cut that shit out and he does."

 _I'll believe that when I see it_ , Russell thought, and resumed scanning the empty street. Behind him he could hear the scuffle and scrape of Daphne's shoes, still moving glass around the uneven pavement.

"C'mon, you chickenshits." Troy leaned out the shattered store window, barely avoiding snagging his brown hair on some shards of broken glass. "Just a couple lurkers behind the counter. I got 'em for ya."

Daphne flashed him a wide grin. "Thanks for savin' us the trouble."

"What the fuck ever. Just c'mon in and get your shit. And hurry it up. I ain't babysitting you assholes out here after dark."

"It ain't even gonna take me half an hour, Troy."

"What the fuck ever," Troy grumbled again. "I'm gonna check the place next door, see if there's anything worthwhile." As he ducked his head back inside the window he added, "Don't yell for me to come save your ass, 'cause I won't. Goes double for you, new kid."

Troy left the store at the same time they entered, barging through the door frame and forcing them to slide sideways through the remaining space. Russell couldn't shake the feeling he'd timed that deliberately.

Inside, the store was a gray, dreary sort of dark wherever the sunlight couldn't reach. Russell paused a few steps in to let his eyes adjust. The front windows faced the wrong direction to let in much sunlight at this time of day, which struck him as a pretty stupid idea for a garden shop. A smell like wet earth tickled at his nose, with a stronger smell of rotting vegetation somewhere underneath that. He smelled a more human kind of decay too, probably from the walkers Troy had mentioned.

"Watch your step," Daphne murmured back to him. She ran one hand along the wall as she walked to keep her bearings. Her fingertips left bright streaks in the dirt and mold creeping down from the ceiling. "I think the floor's rotting out."

As she spoke, she nodded to a hole in the wooden floor. It was, Russell noticed with some vague vindictive amusement, roughly in the shape of a man's boot. About Troy's size.

Daphne led him down the short hall, and he was careful to follow in her footsteps, about half a dozen paces behind. The rotting floor creaked rather more alarmingly under his feet than it did hers.

Something in her eager step when she moved—light, like a dancer, although with none of the rhythm—reminded him of Chloe. She used to be a ballerina, or so she'd told him, blushing as she'd said it.

Chloe had been a year younger than him and a few inches taller, with the kind of effortless poise that made her look like she'd just stepped out of an oil painting. The kind of person who turned heads before the end of the world. She'd turned his after the end of it, too.

Russell hadn't thought about her, or the rest of Steve's own personal Magnificent Seven, in a very long time. He pushed the thought away as hard as he could and followed Daphne forward.

The sales floor was a wide square of a room with a low slung ceiling. Russell glanced up and noticed that some of the ceiling tiles were brown and swollen. Some were missing altogether, their moldering remains smashed on the floor, leaving black voids overhead. A pipe or two must have burst somewhere.

"Hang on a tic." Daphne stopped to take the flashlight from her belt and clicked it on, scanning the room. Russell blinked in the sudden flood of light.

The shop—the flashlight caught a sign dangling from one hinge that said _Hertzog & Hertzog Welcomes You!—_was a mess of overturned display shelves and tables. The burst pipes had let the shop's grown plants burst forth out of their pots. Half the room had turned into a tangled jungle of dead and dying plants, now starting to wither for want of sunlight and water.

What plant life still lived made the air feel close and humid. Almost hard to breathe. Every time they took a step, Russell heard the crunch of seeds and dirt getting ground under their heels.

Daphne panned the flashlight around until she spotted a door behind the counter, half-hidden in a clump of withered chrysanthemums. "Gotcha." She picked her way across the room and then hopped up and over the waist-high counter with an agility Russell found surprising. He stayed by the front hall, trying not to sweat in the humid air.

She rattled the doorknob, swearing under her breath. Tried pushing the door with her shoulder, for all the good it would do—the door didn't budge. "' _Course_ it's locked. Russell, can you look for the keys? They've gotta be back here—" this with a wave to the counter that stretched across the room— "somewhere. I'm gonna see if there's anything useful on the shelves. Or just something to break that door down."

"I—yeah, sure." He tried to follow the path she'd carved through the plant life, wincing when his sneakers ground down against something that sounded more like bone than a seed. Just a mouse or a rat, or so he hoped.

Daphne, meanwhile, had slid back over the top of the counter, shedding her oversized Army jacket as she went. That left her in dust-stained jeans and a camo print t-shirt he could've sworn he saw one of the guards, Johnny, wearing a few days ago. It hung baggy and awkward on her, though she didn't seem to mind. "Thanks. You need the flashlight?"

"Probably not." His eyes had already adjusted to the room's hazy light. There was a hole in the roof in the far corner that let in just enough sunlight for him to see by.

Rather than clamber over the counter like she had, Russell found the flap and pushed it up. The wood had warped in the moist heat, only popping free with a loud _crack_ and a shower of splintered wood. He left it propped up and stepped behind the counter.

He stopped short when he saw the bodies tangled on the floor. Two walkers, both so old their skin looked more like leather, with any distinguishing features long since subsumed under decay. "Shit," he muttered, his nose wrinkling despite himself.

Both were dead—again—with their skulls caved in, probably done with the butt of Troy's rifle. Russell had wondered why they hadn't heard any gunshots. "Shit, man," he said again. "He could've just shot those things."

Daphne's head popped up over the top of one of the shelves still standing. "Didn't want to use the ammo, I guess. Gunshots draw the wrong kind of attention anyhow."

He knew she had a point, but something about the whole thing still struck him as unnecessarily cruel. Or maybe that was down to the fact that one of the walkers' faces had been smashed in with so much force, one half-rotten eye had popped out of its socket. It had rolled away into a dip in the floor. Russell nudged it with his foot—and then immediately regretted it, hearing the soft _squelch_ it made as it moved. Whatever remained of his breakfast gave a tiny heave in his gut.

"So long as he doesn't do that shit to anybody I know." He tried to put his back to the bodies as he began sifting through drawers and dusty, cob-webbed shelves.

"You really oughta cut Troy some slack. He's a guard. Like you. Doing that kinda thing's just his job."

He almost wanted to laugh. Not even Shel was that naïve, and she had her moments. "What about all that trash talk earlier? Is that in the job description?"

He thought he heard Daphne sigh, or maybe that had been a floorboard settling. "I told you, that's...just how he is. Guess he still ain't used to being around us civilized folks." As she talked, he heard a rustle and clunk of items getting tossed into her backpack. She must have found something worthwhile in the shelves after all. "You know, before they fell in with Bill, he and Johnny and Hank were all with this big passel of bandits, over in Kentucky. Said they had a stable of horses they used to ride all up and down the state. Can you imagine a guy like that on a horse?" This last bit ended in a wry giggle.

"I try not to imagine an asshole like that at all." He slammed one drawer shut as he said it and moved on to the next.

When he looked up again, Daphne was peering around a half-fallen over shelf, watching him with wide, worried eyes. "I ain't bothering you, am I?" She twisted her braid around her short fingers as she said it, like some sort of nervous fidget. "I know I talk too much. Drives folks around here crazy sometimes."

"Not really," he answered with a vague shrug. In the back of his head he knew what Shel's response would be, that she should never feel sorry for something like that. That if Russell or Troy got offended then, well, that was their own faults.

Further back still was Nate, elbowing him in the ribs and spilling whiskey all over the truck cab, cackling about _chicks, am I right_?

"It's not you," he clarified, trying to ignore both of them. "Troy just reminds me of this guy I used to know, that's all."

Daphne tilted her head to one side, frowning. She'd stopped twirling her braid, at least. "Not a friend, I'm guessing."

" _Fuck_ , no." He ducked down behind the counter, trying to avoid her curious stare. Or any further questions. "You find anything to break that door down yet? I'm not sure I'm gonna find that key."

It occurred to him that there was one likely place left to search—the bodies on the floor behind him—but he'd already decided to save that for a last resort.

"Not unless you count this." She tossed a pitchfork forward onto the counter. It landed with a clatter and a small shower of rust.

Russell caught it just before it would have slid forward onto his head. "I don't think that's gonna work."

They lapsed into an awkward sort of near silence after that. Daphne hummed under her breath as she worked; he didn't recognize the tune. As for Russell, he picked through half-empty bags of rodent repellent and watering cans full of cobwebs and spiders, not really paying attention to what he was doing.

At the back of one shelf he found an old teddy bear, not much bigger than his hand, its fur matted with dust and mouse droppings. One button eye was missing; the other hung by a fraying pair of threads. It had a ratty pink ribbon wrapped tight around its neck, with a tag attached: _if I get lost, please return me to…_

Russell shoved it behind a pile of yellowed seed catalogs before he could finish reading the tag. "Shit." He only hoped its owner, whoever they were, was somewhere safe.

"Russ?" He heard the floor creak as Daphne stepped closer. "You okay?"

"Fine." Russell stood up fast enough to make his head spin, dusting his hands off on his pants as he went. "Just pissed off a couple spiders." She laughed then, and he felt a tiny bit of the tension leave his shoulders.

"Are you sure you need to get into that back room?" He thought maybe if he kept her talking—about something other than Troy—then maybe that would help put that sad-eyed bear out of his mind.

Daphne ambled up to the counter, her backpack hanging from one hand, a pot full of some dried plant he didn't recognize in the other. She held her flashlight in her teeth, the light wobbling this way and that as she tried to keep it from shining in his eyes. "It's the stockroom," she said once she set the plant down and pulled the flashlight free. "Most everything out here's dead or wrecked, and if there's some seeds back there still good, well, we need everything we can get."

"Doesn't Howe's have that big garden center?" He remembered seeing it when Tavia had taken him and Wyatt on a tour of the perimeter. They were mostly using it as storage, she'd explained, but someone needed to patrol the fence just in case.

"Yup." She leaned over the counter again, found a shelf full of plastic bags, and grabbed one to wrap the plant up in. "And if you want to grow some real nice roses, we got the seeds for those."

"Not doing so hot on the fruits and vegetables front," he concluded with a frown.

Daphne nodded, cinching the plastic bag shut around the plant, pot and all. "Somebody looted 'em before we got there. And Bill and Aunt Vera really want to get going on building the greenhouses. Which means I gotta get in that stockroom."

 _Great_. There was exactly one place he hadn't looked yet for those keys. He nudged one of the walker bodies with his shoe, grimacing. It made a sound like dry, creaky leather when it moved.

He could feel Daphne's eyes on him as he hesitated; imagined her thin, freckled face creasing into a frown. "They're just lurkers, Russell. Dead ones. If they weren't, they would've bit your ankle clean off by now."

"It's not that," he snapped back, hunching his shoulders. "It's just...they used to be people." People who'd lived and worked and maybe loved the owner of a rat-eaten teddy bear.

 _Russ, you keep thinking like that and you're never gonna get anywhere._ Steve's voice had always been at its softest and most amiable when he was pissed off. _Now quit whining and help me with this one._ _I want his jacket._

"Guess you're right. I mean, not like people are all that either, but..." Daphne's voice trailed off, and when he glanced back at her, a frown flickered across her face like a shadow. It made him wonder what kind of things she'd seen. "Let me do it."

"No. I've done this shit before." It had just been a while, and he hadn't really had the stomach for it then, either. He sucked in a tiny breath and decided to start with the hip pockets first—those were always the worst. Brittle skin crackled as he patted down each pocket in turn.

Above him, leaning over the counter, Daphne kept talking. He thought she might be trying to keep his mind off what he was doing. "I met your friend Shel yesterday. She seems real nice."

Russell slid his thumb and forefinger into one hip pocket, suddenly glad he'd missed lunch. What he thought was a key turned out to be a Swiss army knife; he tossed it up onto the counter with a sigh.

"Huh. Troy or somebody could use this," Daphne murmured, tossing it into her pack before she carried on. Something or other about how she'd wanted Shel's help on the greenhouse project, but Carlos had gotten to her first. Russell had almost tuned her out by then. "Anyway. If you've got any kinda green thumb, we could use some volunteers, is what I'm saying. I'd sure be glad to have you."

"Nah. Not me." His Gram had had a garden. He'd tried to help her with it, after her arthritis had started getting bad. By now, he could only assume it was nothing but weeds.

"Too bad. What is it you did before all this?"

The jangle of a keychain saved him from having to answer. He pulled it free from a back pocket, shaking the lint from it. "Found your keys."

Daphne hopped over the counter and grabbed them out of his hand, planting a brief kiss on his cheek as she went. It was enough to make him blush; he was just glad her attention was already on the stockroom door. She hummed again as she tried each key in turn, rattling the lock. Russell meanwhile wiped his hands very carefully on his jeans and got to his feet.

"You need any help sorting through seeds?" Tavia was already on his case about how if he was going to stay here, he needed to get better at socializing. Truth be told he would rather keep watch outside; the close, cloying air in here was starting to get to him.

"No, I'll be fine." Daphne finally found the right key; the lock turned with a tired, heavy clunk of the tumblers. "I figured I'd—"

Whatever she'd been about to say was cut short as the stockroom's door swung inwards—and bounced off the nose of a walker, standing behind it. Daphne made a tiny noise, a sharp inhale that sounded almost comically like an _eep_ , and then the walker lunged.

It must have been trapped in that back room for months. Maybe even since the outset of the apocalypse. It was little more than a skeleton, but that only seemed to make it fierce with hunger. Daphne sprang away, only to be dragged back when its brittle, grasping fingers found her forearm and latched on.

Russell didn't remember even taking his handgun out of its holster, let alone raising it. The first shot grazed its ear, tearing off a strip of gray flesh. Daphne ducked, nearly doubling over. The walker teetered—the shot had blown it backward, but its grip on Daphne still pulled it forward.

Russell fired again. And again. The second short went wild; the third caught it in the neck. It fell back against the wall with a groan like a wet gurgle. In its flailing attempts to get to its feet, it had at least let Daphne go.

He tried to take aim and fire again, but then Daphne reappeared, pitchfork in hand. Cursing up a storm, she charged forward and—with a singular burst of strength—drove the pitchfork straight through the walker's neck. Momentum carried them both back, and she didn't stop until the pitchfork's tines sank into the drywall, pinning the walker like a monstrous butterfly.

"Ain't gonna hold." Daphne spoke between ragged gasps for breath. As if to emphasize her point, drywall splintered and cracked, and the pitchfork wobbled in the air as the walker strained to get at them. "Take the shot!"

He stared at her, face blank, not comprehending. It was hard to hear her over the ringing in his ears and the sound of his heartbeat, thrumming in his chest like a live wire.

Then in the next instant he felt himself shoved roughly aside, the gun torn from his iron grip. Troy had appeared seemingly out of nowhere—he must have come running as soon as he heard the first shot. He fired one last bullet, square through the walker's forehead. It sagged, all strength leaving it in an instant. Gore and white flecks of bone splattered across the off-white wall behind it. Unable to support the dead weight, the pitchfork clattered to the floor.

Russell stood still frozen. The ringing in his ears only seemed to get louder when silence descended.

Troy meanwhile was still on the move. He rounded on Daphne, grabbing her wrist. Angry red marks had risen on her forearm where the walker had grabbed her, promising bruises. "What the fuck, Daph. You bit?" He grabbed each of her arms in turn, wrenching her shoulders around at awkward angles as he checked her for bites.

"I'm not—Troy, _ow—_ "

He made to lift up her shirt next, but she reached up with her free hand and slapped him, right across the face. Russell didn't think she'd put much strength behind it. A bright, angry blush had started to bloom across her cheeks. "I ain't bit, Troy, and if I were, it wouldn't be _there_. Keep your hands to yourself."

Troy let her arm drop, smirking. "Not like you got much to look at anyway."

That insult seemed to strike Daphne harder than any slap; she shrank back at once, rubbing at the marks on her arm. Russell glanced away and tried to get his racing heartbeat under control.

Troy ignored them both, leaning over to inspect the walker's body. Then all at once he started to laugh. "Shit, new kid, your aim fucking sucks." He waved the pistol over his head, flicking the safety back on. "I'm keeping this 'till you learn how to shoot straight."

Anger shot through him, white hot, fed by adrenaline. Russell lunged forward, putting himself right in Troy's face. He smelled of sweat and hot gunpowder. " _Fuck off,_ man. You said you cleared this place! If you did your job—"

Troy pushed him away, his face contorted into a dark scowl. "I saved both your asses. You oughta be sucking my dick, not giving me this bullshit—"

"I don't owe you shit! Give me my gun back."

"You want it? Fuckin' eat it, asshole!"

Still high on adrenaline, Russell saw the gun swinging towards his face in slow motion. He ducked a split-second before it would've slammed into his jaw. His fist clenched and he swung back, aiming for Troy's stomach, but he jumped back just in time.

" _Both of you, quit_!"

Daphne's voice sounded shrill with anxiety. Russell stopped and jumped back, more out of surprise than anything else. His sneakers almost slipped in the small puddle of gore that had formed on the floor.

He stayed braced for another attack from Troy, but he'd fallen back too. Though Russell was quick to note that he still had the gun raised and ready to swing.

When Daphne realized she'd actually gotten both their attention she stopped short, worrying her lip with her teeth. "It ain't nobody's fault," she mumbled after a pause. "The door was locked. Troy didn't know. Nobody got hurt, so let's...let's just get going. Please?"

Troy mulled that over for a minute, or as close as Troy got to proper thinking. "If it makes you quit bitching, fine. But I'm keeping this." This with a wave of the handgun, which he holstered in the back of his khakis. "And new kid gets the fuck outta my sight."

"Fine," Russell agreed, exhaling through clenched teeth. It wasn't, of course; some part of him still itched to knock Troy's ego down a peg or two to where it belonged. The rest of him didn't think he had the energy left for another fight.

Daphne brightened a little at that. "Thanks. And thank you for the rescue, Troy." That seemed to settle Troy more than anything; the lazy smirk dropped back into place.

"Least one of you 's got some fuckin' sense." He pushed her past him, deeper into the stockroom. "Hurry up and grab your shit. All that noise is gonna bring lurkers."

The tension in the room ratcheted back up just as soon as Daphne disappeared from view. Troy took up a spot near the door, his arms folded across his chest, glowering. Russell felt suddenly naked and vulnerable without a gun.

"I'll meet you guys outside."

Troy grunted in acknowledgment. "You take a swing at me again, I'm gonna kill you." His voice was distant, his attention more on watching the stockroom than anything else. But Russell had no doubt at all that he'd meant it.

"Same to you," he muttered back. _Fucker_.

The humid air felt like it was pressing at his throat, suffocating him. Russell stormed straight back out of the shop without another word.

The outside welcomed him with a rush of cool air and sunlight so bright it made his eyes hurt. He stood for a minute on the sidewalk, taking in deep gulps of air while he waited for his vision to clear. The ringing in his ears had faded to a dull roar.

The street at least was empty, just debris and scattered ruins of cars. No walkers so far. The sky was clear too; Russell could make out the mountains in the middle distance. Fall had already gone to work on them; the peaks were turning red and yellow, with a hint of barren brown at the very top.

A sudden urge to run grabbed at him, seizing him almost by the throat. Just drop everything and _go_ , past Howe's and clear up the mountain and back down the other side.

He fought the urge back down in his next breath. Running had never gotten him much of anywhere, except into more trouble. And this place was supposed to be different. At least that's what Bonnie kept saying.

 _I think you oughta stay put_ , she'd said on the drive up, her voice barely carrying out of the backseat. _Even if your grandma ain't there. It'd be good for you_.

Wyatt had just laughed. _Bonnie, come on. We both know Russ is totally incapable of standing still. Right, Russ?_

Russell remembered flipping them both off and propping his feet up on the dashboard, just so he could sink down further in his seat. Shadows of mountains rose out of the dark. He watched them slip by and thought, _Maybe_.


	3. Armory

**Notes:** Astute readers might notice some discrepancy between the interior of Howe's as seen in "In Harm's Way" and what appears in this fic. I've taken some liberties in that arena because...well, the more I researched and developed Howe's as a setting, the more I realized the canon version made no sense.

In canon, it looks more like Carver's people have been squatting there a week rather than living and working on it for over a year. (Probably more like two years!) Food is stored improperly, there's no signs of any living space, merchandise is still on the shelves and not being used / inventoried, outside doors aren't barred / guarded, and on and on. (I don't understand why Carver's building an "expansion"; he's barely using the space he's got already!)

So, yes, there's been some changes to make Howe's a more plausible settlement, and there'll be more as the story moves along. Key locations like Carver's office and the Yard remain more or less unchanged.

* * *

 **3\. Armory**

Bonnie had been at Howe's for a week before she ran into her first insurmountable challenge. The pot sat lopsided in the washing tub, dripping soap suds from its rim. It was so large that every time Bonnie leaned in to clean the bottom she felt sure she was going to fall in, head first.

Although now that she thought of it, that might be better than dealing with the argument unfolding outside.

Bill Carver had appeared just as Vera was rounding up the last of the breakfast dishes. Bonnie hadn't paid him much mind; she'd been up to her elbows in soap suds by then. Whatever he'd had to say though, it was enough to send Vera on a long-winded tear. Bonnie could hear every word; no doubt so could the rest of the building, and maybe half the county besides. "You want me running your kitchen, you treat me with some goddamn respect," she was saying now. "You can't keep pulling this shit."

Bonnie wasn't sure how someone as small as Vera managed to be so loud, or so angry. She just preferred to keep out of the crossfire. And so, it seemed, did everyone else. The few folks who'd been lingering around the warmth of the kitchen had scattered as quick as they could.

Every so often Bonnie would peer through the gap in the blue vinyl dividers that blocked off the kitchen area. Vera had her back to her and her nose right in Carver's face—though she had to stand almost on tiptoe to reach it. As for Carver, Bonnie couldn't hear a word he said; Vera's bellowing drowned him out. Their new leader didn't strike her as the type to raise his voice anyway. Whenever she glanced outside, she saw him standing still and stone-faced. She wasn't sure he'd even moved at all since Vera's tirade had started.

Bonnie forced her attention back to the matter at hand: the impossible pot. She sighed, absently squeezing the dishcloth in her hand. Water dripped onto the tile floor.

She'd gotten it down to the last holdouts—grits scraps burned black and as hard as concrete, in the shape of the camp stove they'd been cooked on—but they were proving intractable. All she had to show for it were fingertips turned red and raw. Her bad shoulder had started to ache too, just to add injury to insult.

Her mother had known all sorts of tricks to stop the grits from burning and sticking to the bottom. But Bonnie was hesitant to mention any of them to Vera, who was always one mislaid word away from going nuclear. Especially when it came to her cooking, where even the slightest criticism came as an attack on herself and her family name.

Maybe if she tried talking to Vera's niece, instead. Daphne was all sweetness and light—almost too much for Bonnie to handle for very long. She'd listen to advice though, and then maybe Bonnie wouldn't waste an entire morning fighting with a pot.

She had just started to cast about for a knife, hoping to scrape the pot clean, when the discussion outside concluded with an irate sigh from Vera. "Son of a bitch. All right. Just this once, and only 'cause I like you. Lord knows why."

The next thing she knew, Carver strode forward, pushing one of the tall dividers aside. "Bonnie," he began, stone-faced still...only for Vera to cut him short, ducking under his arm.

"Bonnie, seems like the Grand High Poobah here—" she jerked a thumb back at Carver, whose cheek had now started to twitch— "needs you more than I do. Guess it ain't enough that he's gotta send Daph out chasing her tail all over town, now he's after the only help I got today."

Carver put his hand on Vera's shoulder and pulled her back behind him with surprising strength and speed. The soles of her shoes screeched on the tile. "When I want an editorial I'll ask you for one. Bonnie, with me. Vera, I told you I'd send Rebecca as soon as she's free. You got no room to complain."

Vera pushed forward past him again, surveying all the dishes left to be done. "Send Alvin instead and you've got a deal."

"Done."

Bonnie, who felt like she'd been caught in the middle of a ping-pong match, just nodded. More soap dripped off her hands. "Well...all right. What's this about?"

She must have spoken too softly; Carver didn't give any sign he'd heard her. He just turned and walked out of the kitchen, stopping to wait a few steps away. His back was to them, and under his dark gray shirt, his spine looked like one solid line of tension.

Vera passed over a towel for her to dry her hands. "He's just pissed 'cause I told him what he needed to hear. Give him a minute to let it sink through his damn hard head."

Bonnie nodded again. Her eyes were still glued to Carver's back. She'd met Carver once before, in passing. He'd come out to greet them the night they'd arrived. _He does this every time_ , Tavia had said, her smile wry. _Just humor him. No need to feel intimidated._

Truth be told, Bonnie hadn't had much cause to feel intimidated then. Carver had barely paid her any mind—he'd asked her name, smiled politely when she told him, and then moved on. It was like his eyes had slid right over her. He'd paid more attention to Wyatt and Russell.

She suspected she'd find him less intimidating now if Vera hadn't wound him up.

Bonnie finished drying her hands, made her apologies to Vera—who accepted them with another grumble about people taking her for granted—and left. She rolled her sleeves back down as soon as she left the kitchen. Vera almost always had a camp stove lit and a pot of water set to boil, for the endless parade of cooking and dish washing that needed doing. It had left a smoke stain on the overhang above and made the space warm and almost humid. The rest of the building, with its concrete and tile floors and high steel rafters, felt chilly by comparison.

When she came up alongside Carver, she cleared her throat and made her apologies to him, too.

Carver's smile was warm but somehow did nothing to remove the tension from his craggy face. "You aren't the one that oughta apologize, Bonnie. But I appreciate it all the same." He motioned her forward. "We don't have far to go. This way."

The kitchen—and its small sprawl of food storage—took up much of the space under the manager's office. Beyond it lay what could charitably be called a dining area, where the checkout lanes had once been. All the kiosks were pushed up against the front wall now. In their place, the people of Howe's had hauled in whatever lawn and patio furniture the store had in stock to serve as dining tables.

The result was a mad jumble of plastic and metal and wood that, according to Vera, was hell to keep clean. One glasstop table still had its umbrella attached, though taped shut; no one had bothered taking it down. Bonnie thought the red and blue polka dots gave the place some color.

To the left of the dining area, a line of empty shelves formed something of a barricade. They kept a lot of the store's old stock back in there, presumably in some sort of order, although Bonnie had yet to figure out which one. Tavia had sent her in there once for a level, and then had to send someone in to find _her_ after she'd been gone almost half an hour, unable to find anything among the stacks.

At least her rescue party had been nice about it and only teased her a little. She just wished she could remember his name. Lukas or Luke or something like it.

Farther still beyond that were the living quarters. At the moment they were all communal, a great mess of cots and sleeping bags. _How very...cozy_ , was how Shel put it, as politely as she could. She was in the bunk next to Bonnie, with Becca beside her. Bonnie just hoped the rumors about Carver putting together plans for separated, less _cozy_ bunks were true.

Carver led her through a gap in the barricade and then made a hard left, weaving around a stack of boxes towering higher than Bonnie.

They'd only gone a few steps down the aisle when a small stampede rounded the corner up ahead: a pair of boys, about eight or nine years old, running as fast as their feet could carry them. When they spotted Carver, rather than slowing down, one boy broke left and the other right, aiming to dive around him.

A woman rounded the corner after them, with her long brown hair bouncing in tangled knots behind her and her dark face turning red from exertion. "Garrett, Eli, _slow down_ —"

Carver let the one on his left go by, and then grabbed the second by the collar of his sweater. The boy skidded to a stop with a squawk of protest. When the other realized he was charging on alone he stopped, almost like someone had cut all his strings.

They were twins, Bonnie realized. Identical down to the last detail, except that the one Carver had hold of had a birthmark on his left cheek. It was dark red like a wine stain, and ran over his jaw and partway down his thin neck like one, too. He kicked and made scuff marks on the tile with his red sneakers, but Carver's grip on him was too strong.

"Tisha," he began, nodding to the woman chasing them, "you making the boys run laps again?"

"No," she panted, resting her hands on her knees. She had a hint of an accent Bonnie couldn't quite place. Louisiana, maybe. "Might do me some good, though."

Carver, politely, didn't comment. "Then where's the fire?"

"It's a long story, Bill." Tisha caught her breath quick enough. She straightened, running her hand through her hair. "I can handle it; you look busy." She smiled, almost plaintively. Even so, her smile had an ease and warmth to it that lit up her whole face. Bonnie thought she was strikingly pretty when she smiled.

"I'm sure you can." Carver smiled back, but his grip on the boy only tightened. "But it seems like the boys went and made it my business. Anything I need to be concerned about?"

"You'd laugh," Tisha began, chuckling a little herself. "It really isn't anything—"

A moment later, Bonnie heard a noise behind her—and glanced back just in time to see a teenage girl clamber over the top of the shelving unit. When she dropped down to the floor she landed on all fours, palms first, so that she barely made a sound.

"Who—" Bonnie began, startled, but the girl shushed her. She was tall for her age, all elbows and gangly limbs; her ragged gray hoodie didn't even reach her wrists. Her brown hair was pulled back in a short ponytail, and her skin had turned a deep tan from the sun. She looked more like a field mouse than anything, but she moved like some sort of big hunting cat.

If Carver had even seen her land, he didn't give any sign. The two boys clearly did, though; both their eyes widened, and the one in Carver's grip started to kick at his shoes. "Let go!"

Carver sighed and lifted him up by the back of his shirt, just enough so his feet wouldn't touch the ground. "Patience is a virtue, Eli, but it isn't one I'm blessed with. Go on, Tisha."

"Well, I had just—"

Bonnie's attention was more on the girl who'd dropped in than what Tisha was saying. As Bonnie watched, she circled around behind Carver and grabbed the second boy—Garrett—by the arm before he could make a run for it.

Now that she saw them side by side, it was clear they were siblings. They had the same blue-gray eyes, like steel, and the same short round faces and pug noses. The girl pulled her brother back toward Tisha without a word.

Carver, meanwhile, seemed to be getting nowhere fast with the third sibling. Eli had fast figured out that even suspended off the ground, his legs still worked, and had begun kicking Carver in the shins. The harder the boy kicked, the higher and farther out Carver held him. His feet were level with Carver's knees now, and his feet kicked empty air instead of flesh and bone.

"Let me go, you big ass!"

Tisha broke off her story to hiss, " _Elijah Kingman_."

Bonnie watched as Carver's eyes narrowed. Beyond that, he didn't move so much as a muscle. "This _ass_ is keeping a roof over your head and food in your belly. I would've thought your sister taught you to respect that. She sure as hell had time to teach you how to curse."

He paused as if to let all that sink in. "Now let's try that again."

Eli's small chin jutted out with defiance, but he seemed to have hit his limit. Bonnie thought it was a small wonder his shirt collar wasn't choking him, besides. "I'm sorry," he said, all contrition. "And I didn't mean to swear."

Carver, seeming satisfied, set the boy back down on his feet. "If I were my daddy, I'd've taken that apology and tanned your hide with it. You go on now, and maybe think about how damn lucky you are to be here. And that I ain't him."

Tisha nudged Garrett with her elbow. "I'm sorry too, Mr. Carver," he added, with maybe a touch less sincerity than his twin. "We only ran 'cause Maddie was chasing us." The girl glowered and gave his arm a brief jerk.

"Next time, save your strength for when it actually matters." Nodding to Tisha, Carver continued, "Get them back in their lessons. And let me know if they give you any more trouble."

Tisha seemed to relax, smiling again as she led the boys away. "I will. Thanks for the help, Bill. Sorry to trouble you."

"Hell, I don't mind. Someone's got to teach those boys some discipline."

As Tisha passed by, the pale morning sunlight glinted off a small gold cross, suspended on a slender chain around her neck. Then she was gone, the twins with her, although Bonnie could hear them protesting that it _still_ wasn't their fault.

Carver turned his attention now to Maddie, who'd remained behind. Didn't say a word, just quirked one bushy eyebrow her way.

"They put a spider in my bunk," she supplied at once. When that didn't seem to have any impact, she added, "One of the big ugly brown ones. From out in the garden center."

Bonnie had seen a couple of those. They liked to weave their webs in the wrought iron fence. And in all fairness to Maddie, they were about twice the size Bonnie thought they needed to be. _Wouldn't want to find one of those in_ my _sleeping bag, either_.

Carver sighed. Somehow he looked more annoyed now than he had during his entire argument with Vera. "Madeleine Elizabeth, how old are you?"

Bonnie's brow knit together in confusion, but the girl just squared her shoulders and answered, "Sixteen." Her voice was a low alto, as flat and emotionless as her face.

"Old enough to know better. You can handle lurkers and bandits, you can deal with a little spider. Smash the damn thing and move on like a fucking adult. This isn't gonna happen again. We clear?"

Bonnie expected her to protest. Becca would've been halfway through a rant by now. But Maddie set her lips into a firm, unwavering line and nodded. "It won't happen again, Bill. I promise."

Carver returned her nod with one of his own. "See that it doesn't. Now get on back to work."

Maddie darted away without another word, as quick and quiet as she'd first appeared. When she was gone, Carver shook his head. "Somebody oughta teach all these ungrateful bastards some respect."

Bonnie thought he must have forgotten about her. She cleared her throat once, hoping it wouldn't be too awkward. Carver whirled around at once, his whole face a dark scowl. When he spotted her, though, he snapped right out of his mood and smiled, quick and easy.

"George taught 'em that damn trick with the spiders. Maddie still hasn't forgiven him for it. Hell, I'm not sure I have either. Where were we?"

Bonnie tried to smile with him. Truth be told, she'd missed seeing children around, and families. Until she'd come to Howe's the end of the world had seemed largely the domain of adults, usually whichever ones held the largest guns. Carver's camp was home to three or four children, with one more on the way. It made for a welcome change.

"Here we are." At the end of the aisle sat a tall metal door marked _employees only_. An old workroom and tool shop, now designated the armory by virtue of being one of the few rooms in the building with both four walls and a door that locked.

Tavia had pointed it out to her on her first day here, but Bonnie had never gotten so much as a peep inside. The head of the camp's guards—a sullen, foul-mouthed man with more of a chip on his shoulder than Wyatt and Russell put together—had taken one look at her and deemed her not guard material.

Which was fine by her. She happened to agree with that assessment, if not the spirit of it. _I hope Bill doesn't have other ideas_.

Carver started to reach for a ring of keys at his hip but stopped, testing the doorknob first. It turned readily; the door swung inwards with a squeak. "How hard is it to lock a fucking door?" he growled, a rough low rumble that made Bonnie feel unaccountably uneasy. That twitch was back in his cheek.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing a kick to the head won't fix."

Bonnie couldn't tell if he was joking or not. When she stepped inside the armory, she suspected not.

Her new group had no shortage of guns or ammunition, that much was clear. But their armory was a disorganized clutter, at best: still half a workshop, with power tools hanging on the walls or just left lying on tables to collect dust. A barrel full of nails rested near Carver's feet, waiting to trip the unwary. The other half of the room was a scattered mess of guns, some put haphazardly in racks, some left on the floor—Bonnie hoped unloaded. Boxes of ammunition were strewn all over the room, on chairs and tables, in no particular order.

"This is why I poached you from Vera," Carver said as he closed the door behind her.

"You...want me to clean up the place?" Howe's had a man in charge of the armory, she was certain of it. Some reedy, dark-haired man whose name escaped her. There'd been too many new faces in the past week for her to possibly keep them all straight.

"More like light a fire under Gary's ass. I can't seem to put the fear of God back into him, but you..."

"I don't think...I mean, I'm about as intimidating as a kitten." A tiny blush crept into her cheeks despite all her attempts to fight it down. _I think maybe you've got the wrong idea_ , she wanted to add, but didn't want to risk insulting him. He seemed like he'd had his fill of that today already.

Carver carried on as if he hadn't heard her. "You could get this place organized, get a proper inventory going. Tavia thinks you've got a good head for that sort of thing."

She glanced around the room again, her head swimming. "I...well, I suppose, but Shel's really better—"

"And if I wanted her help, I'd ask her for it. I chose you instead." He paused then, his eyes drawn to the ginger tangle of her hair. "Besides, I hear Gary likes redheads more than brunettes. To each his own."

Now Bonnie _knew_ he had the wrong idea. Her cheeks burned bright, and she found herself taking an involuntary step back. "I—I don't think so," she stammered, and wished she could put more force behind it. "I'm not—"

Carver, who had already turned and started to pick the guns up off the floor, started to laugh. It made for a rough, hollow sound that only made the hairs on the back of her neck stand more on end. "What the hell sort of man do you take me for, Bonnie? That ain't what I meant."

"Then what _did_ you mean?"

If she'd been expecting an apology, it didn't look like she'd get one. "Gary won't give you lip the way he does me and mine, and he won't run you off the way he did the last man I tried putting in here. You're a damn sight prettier than Luke. Hell, probably smarter, too."

A small yellow spider made its creeping way along the floor between them. Carver paused to flatten it under his heel before he continued. "Nobody's asking you to seduce him. Unless it strikes your fancy." The wry look in his eyes when he glanced back at her suggested he didn't think that likely. He was more right than he knew. "Just play nice and bat your eyelashes or—whatever the hell it is women do. Whatever it takes to get this place back in shape. That's all I want. Now, you willing or aren't you?"

Bonnie's lips pursed into a frown as she considered it. This was far more responsibility than she'd had—well, ever. _Or at least since Mama passed_. She just wasn't sure she'd earned it by any virtue except the color of her hair.

When she didn't respond right away, Carver quirked an eyebrow at her, still waiting.

So the man was a little awkward. That didn't mean he was ill-intentioned. Maybe the spat with Vera had just set him off-kilter. And it occurred to her that she'd been looking for a chance, some opportunity to prove herself—both to Howe's and her own self. This junk heap of an armory, she realized, this was her chance.

"Willing."

Carver's whole face brightened. "I knew you'd see the sense of it. I had you pinned as a good egg from the start.

"Now, Gary's gone out on a scavenging run and won't be back 'till tomorrow. We got until then to make a head start on this mess." He nodded to the worktable behind her, piled high with circular sawblades. Most of them were still in their plastic packaging, but a few lay in wait to slice the unwary.

"There's a clipboard somewhere under all that mess. See if you can find it, and mind your fingers."

* * *

For a time they worked in what felt like, to Bonnie at least, companionable silence. Carver was nothing if not efficient; he worked around her, and never gave much in the way of direction, just waited to see if she'd catch on and follow his lead. Bonnie almost succeeded, and felt a tiny flush of pride when she realized it.

She also felt Carver's eyes on her sometimes. Like she was something to be studied under a microscope. She didn't figure out why until he leaned around her, sliding a box of empty magazines into place, and touched her bad shoulder. Right over the scar. A small twinge of pain ran its way up the side of her neck at the contact.

"You keep favoring this arm. We've got us a doctor. He's good at his work, or so he keeps telling me." Another one of those wry, hollow smiles. "Maybe you ought to have him take a look."

Bonnie's whole shoulder seemed to cringe at the thought. That wound had been poked and prodded more than enough for one lifetime, by her thinking. "Oh, no, no thanks. There's nothing he could do anyway. This is just...well, guess you could call it an old war wound."

Carver stepped back and looked her over again, silent and assessing. "How'd it happen?"

"Bandits." She turned her attention back to reassembling the AK-47—where they'd gotten so many of _those_ was beyond her—in front of her so she wouldn't have to meet his piercing stare. "Robbery gone wrong. You know how it is these days."

It wasn't so much a lie as it was an inversion of the real truth, a truth she had no interest in reliving. If Carver picked up on any of that, he gave no obvious sign. She didn't dare look up to check.

"Suppose I do."

He seemed about to say something more when the radio on his hip crackled to life. Bonnie didn't recognize the man's voice on the other end through all the static. It sounded like they were on the very edge of the radio's range.

" _Shit—shit, come on, piece of shit—Carlos, you there? —took some fire, Jo's been hit—we need you_ now—" Another burst of static drowned his voice out. Carver pulled the radio free from his belt, listening intently.

The radio clicked again. Bonnie could pick out Carlos's voice by his accent alone. " _I'll meet you at the door, Johnny. What can you tell me? How bad is it?_ " A pause. " _Johnny_?"

The only answer the radio gave back was static. Carver's frown deepened.

Bonnie set her work aside, frowning with him. "What's going on?"

Carver paid her no mind, only grumbling to himself. "I told her not to go. This is what comes outta not listening. No goddamn respect from these people." He started for the armory door, barking orders into the radio as he went. "Tavia, get the damn bay door open. Pete, you got eyes on them up there?"

" _T_ _ruck's_ _comin' up the road now, Bill. Don't see anybody following._ "

"Keep an eye out, just in case. I'm on my way out."

He slid the radio back into place at his hip—there was still a considerable amount of cross-chatter going on, so quick Bonnie couldn't keep up. Carver only seemed to remember she was still in the room when he reached the door.

"Seems like I've got another fire to put out," he announced, voice tight with concern or strain or something like it. "You keep working; I'll be back to help when I can."

Bonnie's head bobbed in an anxious nod. "I hope everyone's all right."

Carver dismissed the thought with a wave of his hand. "It'll be fine." He paused just as he turned the doorknob. "One more thing, Bonnie." Something in his voice made her stop and look at him. "I'm the man what put you here. You answer to me, not Gary. You understand what I'm telling you?"

Bonnie nodded again, resisting the urge to chew on her lower lip. "I do."

His lips curved into a faint smirk. "Knew I hadn't misjudged you. Smart answer."

 _Well now_ , she thought as the door clicked shut behind him, _seems like there's a fox in the nest. And I'm it._


	4. Forest Families

**4\. Forest Families**

"I mean it." Russell punctuated each word with a tap of his fork on the plastic tabletop. "He's psychotic."

"He's weird," Becca agreed around a mouthful of food. "Just like you."

Bonnie made some small, non-committal noise as she moved her breakfast around on her plate. Wyatt didn't think she'd actually bothered to eat any of it. Her brain was somewhere else entirely this morning. "I think you're still just wound up from yesterday."

"Yeah, because Troy's a psychotic break waiting to happen."

Wyatt glanced up from his breakfast—scrambled eggs, although they were made from a dehydrated powder and tasted more like burnt cardboard than anything. Troy lurked at the end of the food line, leaning over an empty pan to talk to Daphne. Daphne's smile was at about a thousand watts, all bright white teeth and batting eyelashes. At the other end of the line Vera watched them with a scowl dark enough to blot out the sun.

"He's kind of an asshole," Wyatt agreed. Not that he'd said more than ten words to Troy so far, but that was just the general impression he got.

Next to him, Shel stirred her eggs with such ferocity they were threatening to turn back to powder and water. "He stopped by the infirmary earlier. To see Jo. He seemed nice enough then." She held her head up with one hand and kept turning to yawn into her palm. Dark circles like bruises stood out under her brown eyes. Bonnie had mentioned Shel hadn't been in her bunk last night. Wyatt didn't think she'd slept at all.

"How's Jo doing?" Bonnie murmured, voice full of concern. Wyatt wondered if she even knew who Jo was, or what had happened to her. He certainly didn't.

Shel heaved a heavy sigh, and then the conversation bent in that direction. Russell found himself left behind, his narrow jaw locked in a scowl. "There's something wrong with this place, man," he said to no one in particular. "I'm telling you. Vince was right; we should've stayed with him."

 _Y_ _eah, and y_ _ou were always one wrong word away from leaving_ that _camp, too_ , Wyatt thought. Out loud, he suggested, "One crazy asshole doesn't ruin the whole bunch, Russ."

"It does when he's the guy in charge."

"Troy ain't in charge, Bill is," Bonnie said, jumping out of her conversation with Shel in an instant. "And he kinda reminds me of Vince sometimes. You know. The protective type." Her cheeks flushed a faint shade of red and she ducked her head as she turned back to Shel, asking her to repeat whatever she'd just said.

"Vince was _never_ right," Becca huffed. "I'm glad he's not here."

Shel broke off mid-sentence, glancing their way. "Don't say that, Becca." Somewhere under all the exhaustion, her voice sounded tense and pained, and her lips were set into a thin firm line. _Now you did it, kid; she's probably gonna cry_.

"Why not? It's true."

"It ain't," Bonnie interjected, though neither Shel nor Becca seemed to hear her. She frowned and went back to picking at her food.

"Vince—it's too early in the morning for this," Shel muttered, running her hand through her short hair. "Just...don't be rude. Okay?"

Becca had already launched into a rebuttal by that point. Wyatt tuned her out—no sense giving himself a headache this early in the morning—and turned back to his breakfast. He had another minute or so of peace before Thérèse appeared, rapping her knuckles on the table to get his attention.

Thérèse was Tavia's girlfriend, a pear-shaped woman of medium height and middle age, with an easy laugh and a taste for bawdy jokes. She clearly had some native ancestry; it showed in her brown skin and her fine, jet black hair, which she was currently twisting into a topknot.

The Howe's gossip mill informed him that she'd grown up somewhere in Quebec and could swear like an entire fleet of sailors in French. Her English was usually more polite.

"Wyatt, yes?" She still had a strong Quebecois accent, even after so many years in the States. It stood out among all the varieties of southern accents that populated Howe's. When he nodded, stifling a yawn, she smiled. "I'm running behind this morning. Head out to the loading dock when you're ready; I'll meet you there. I hope you're up for a hike."

She didn't look like much of a hiker herself; too round around the middle, like Tavia. But appearances could be deceiving, Wyatt supposed. "Yeah. No problem," he answered, and she smiled again and took her leave.

Shel had broken out of her discussion with Becca when Thérèse came by, and now she frowned at him. "Where are you going?" She had finally given up the RV's keys that morning. The whole notion of commitment seemed to have made her antsy. Or maybe she was just afraid everyone else would abandon her the way Vince had. Wyatt wasn't sure which one to lay odds on.

"Some kind of scouting run. I'll be back in a couple days."

" _Days_?" she murmured, sounding dismayed. Definitely the abandonment thing, then.

"At least he's planning on coming back," Russell grumbled. "Not sure I would." In the next breath he was eyeballing Shel's plate, which she hadn't come anywhere near to emptying. "Are you going to finish that?"

Shel pushed her plate across the table without pause for thought. "I should be getting back anyway. Carlos needs a break."

Becca shoveled another forkful of food into her mouth, frowning. "I'm not done yet."

"That's fine. I told Tisha you'd be joining those Kingman boys for lessons today anyway."

Becca stopped with her fork halfway to her mouth, slack-jawed. " _School_?" Russell snickered under his breath, and it was all Wyatt could do not to laugh, too. "What do I need _school_ for? Is this because I said Vince was stupid? _Shel_ —"

"It's things like geography and local plant life, not algebra," Shel continued, getting to her feet. "You'll survive. Bonnie, will you do me a favor? Make sure she gets to Tisha on time?"

Bonnie's eyes widened. "I—okay, sure." Shel left with a tight smile and a wave. Bonnie, meanwhile, looked like someone had just thrown a live grenade in her lap.

"I'm not going," Becca declared, the instant Shel was out of earshot. When Wyatt left the table, they were still arguing. It sounded like Becca was winning.

* * *

One of the guards met him out in the loading dock with a handgun and a pack of supplies. "You know which end of the gun goes where, right?"

"Business end goes in the walkers' faces," Wyatt answered, checking the safety before he holstered it behind his back. The guard grinned at him, showing a few crooked teeth.

"Guess you'll do."

Wyatt had seen the man before but couldn't put a name to his face. He was barely five foot seven, if that, and with a chip on his shoulder about it if what Wyatt had seen was any indication. And he always wore brown and green or some kind of camo. It blended in with his tan skin and dark, flyaway hair. And it made him look like he was always about to run off on a deer hunt.

Wyatt almost would've said he was handsome, if not for the too-broad nose and the ridiculous looking soul patch on his chin.

Thérèse appeared a moment later, carrying a backpack in each hand. Tavia followed behind her, carrying a third. "You can always wait another day or two," she was saying, her voice quiet. "See how things settle with Jo. No one would blame you."

Thérèse handed one backpack to each man with a close-lipped smile. "Johnny, see if you can find Wyatt some gloves. It's starting to get cold at night." Turning back to Tavia, she continued, " _Cherie_ , you and I both know Jo's going to need more than a day or two. Stalling is just going to make Bill cranky, and that's a headache I _know_ you don't need."

"You're right, you're right." Tavia pinched her nose between thumb and forefinger, taking a second to collect herself. "Just do me a favor and try to stay out of trouble?"

Thérèse laughed. "I'd ask when I've ever gotten in trouble, but I don't think I'd like the answer."

"You're right. You really wouldn't." Tavia handed the third backpack over, and at the same time slipped an arm around Thérèse's waist, pulling her close. "Two days, all right? Then turn around and come straight home."

"Two days," Thérèse agreed. She said a few things more, leaning in to kiss her, but her voice had dropped to such a low whisper that Wyatt couldn't hear. He wasn't inclined to eavesdrop anyway.

"Here." Johnny swatted his arm with a pair of gloves, distracting him. "These look like your size."

The gloves were fingerless, and knitted out of gray wool; coarse to the touch. They looked handmade, and no doubt warm. Whoever had knitted them had also stitched the outline of a small heart on each wrist. "Cute," Wyatt said, waving them at Johnny. "These yours?"

Johnny rolled his eyes. "Jason's. If Tisha gets any more obvious, she's gonna start sewing 'please fuck me' into her clothes."

Wyatt pulled a face, but slid the gloves into the front pocket of his pack all the same. He'd mind their history, and the hearts, less than he would frozen fingers. He slid the pack on next, over his sweatshirt. It was heavier than it looked.

Johnny was still struggling to get his into a comfortable position on his narrower shoulders, adjusting the straps first this way, then that. "Jesus, Reese, what'd you put in here? Bricks?"

"Only in yours," Thérèse answered back cheerfully. She gave Tavia one last reassuring peck on the cheek before she started to herd them toward the door. "Let's go. We're...what is it Luke's always saying?"

"Burning daylight," Tavia supplied. "Yes, you are. Now go, and try to come back in one piece. All three of you," she amended, nodding to Wyatt and Johnny. Wyatt nodded back, but Johnny just tugged his knit cap down and ignored her.

Outside, the day had started cloudy, with a few thin tendrils of fog still lurking around the nearby creek. The wind carried more than a hint of a fall chill to it. "This way." Thérèse pointed over their heads to the edge of the parking lot, where the forest began. "We're following the river south, at least until Stone Gap. After that, Bill wants us to look for a clear road down toward Asheville."

"And then what?" Johnny was checking his gun again, paying more attention to it than where he put his feet. "Part the fucking Red Sea?"

"Well, sometimes I think it'd take a miracle to make that man smile again. So maybe while we're at it." As she stepped over the curb and into the weeds, she turned back toward the building and waved. Tavia, standing at the loading bay door, waved back before she turned and disappeared inside.

* * *

They'd only gone a few hundred feet into the forest when Wyatt realized someone was shadowing them. He didn't hear them; he could hardly hear anything over the creek burbling behind them. (It was Howe's main water supply, and prone to overflowing its banks.) But he caught glimpses out of the corner of his eye, flashes of movement as whoever it was slipped between trees and underbrush.

Too quick to be a walker. Too tall and purposeful to be a deer or some other animal. Wyatt caught another flash of gray as the small figure vaulted over a rotting tree stump and behind a rhododendron. He looked ahead. Thérèse hadn't seemed to notice anything amiss; she was half a dozen paces ahead, studying a map as she walked. Johnny hadn't noticed anything either, or he had a hell of a poker face.

Wyatt cleared his throat. "Hey. Johnny, right?"

"Yeah. What?"

He reached back to touch his gun, just to reassure himself that it was still there if he needed it. "There's somebody following us. In those bushes over there."

Johnny didn't break stride as he glanced over. The woods around them were still and quiet, save for a gentle rustling of dry leaves in the wind. For a split second, Wyatt wondered if maybe he was just seeing things.

"Hey, Reese," Johnny shouted up ahead, "hold up a second." He bent to pick up a stone in the path and bounced it in his palm for a moment, considering. Then he cocked his arm back and chucked it toward the bush. Wyatt heard it glance off something soft before it clattered down into the dirt.

" _Ow_! Ass—" The woman's voice was a lot younger than he'd been expecting. For a split second he almost thought it was Becca.

In the next instant, a rock twice the size as the one Johnny had thrown came hurtling over the brush. Johnny, laughing, side-stepped it just before it would have smacked him in the shoulder. Ahead of him, Thérèse rolled her eyes.

"Nice try, Maddie," Johnny called, still laughing. "C'mon out. You're spooking the new guy."

Wyatt expected another rock, or maybe a bullet. Instead what he got was a hand raised up above the brush, middle finger proudly extended Which just made Johnny laugh even more. Then another rustle of branches and the girl was gone, a blur of gray and denim darting through the forest ahead.

Thérèse sighed. "Are you done playing hide-and-seek? Can we get a move on? Please?"

Wyatt was still staring into the shadowy distance where Maddie had disappeared. "What the hell was that?"

"That was Maddie," Johnny answered, shrugging. "She only does two things: what Bill tells her to, and whatever the fuck she wants." He grinned. "You'll like her."

Wyatt wasn't quite convinced of that. The last thing he needed in his life was another Becca, or someone like her. "If you say so."

"She's shadowing us for a few miles," Thérèse clarified. She'd already started back down the deer path they'd been following, her stride quick and sure. Johnny and Wyatt both hurried to catch up. "Bill asked her to. Just in case..." She trailed off, watching Johnny with dark, wary eyes. He seemed to be ignoring her. "You know. Just in case."

"They sent a teenage girl to protect us?" Wyatt's glance went back toward the bush behind them, still swaying in the faint wind. "I feel safer already."

Thérèse seemed to catch his sarcasm and laughed. Johnny just rolled his eyes and grumbled, "Told you we should've brought Troy."

* * *

The going was slower than Wyatt thought it would be. The trip had turned out to be less the scouting run he'd signed up for and more of a _mapping_ run. Thérèse carried a handful of state and local maps, and she kept stopping—what felt like every few paces—to make note of trails, structures and obstacles.

Johnny didn't make for great company either. He wasn't much for conversation. And every time they stopped, he'd just complain how they were sitting ducks until Thérèse got them moving again.

 _Well,_ Wyatt thought, _at least the weather's nice_. The sky had turned a deep, cobalt blue as the day went on, with only a few wispy clouds remaining. Sunlight beat down bright and warm whenever they emerged from the deep forest.

Wyatt put a hand up to shade his eyes as they broke out onto the riverbank. As it moved south, the creek that ran beside Howe's evolved into a proper river. Here it was maybe six feet across and ran shallow, spilling around rocks and river reeds. It reminded Wyatt more of a small marsh than it did a river.

"Here?" he called over his shoulder, as loud as he dared. They'd only run into a small handful of walkers, and no bandits, but Wyatt didn't care for how much his voice echoed across to the other shore.

Thérèse nodded, pausing to shift some of her pack's weight further down her shoulders. "Let me go first. It's trickier than it looks."

Wyatt cast a doubtful look back toward the muddy water. It looked like he could jump across it in two bounds and only get some wet socks for his trouble. As he watched, Thérèse picked up a long branch of driftwood and drove it straight down into the river bottom ahead of him. It sank with surprising ease—the top ended up sticking out at about knee height. The rest was buried down deep in the sand.

"What the hell is that, quicksand?" Wyatt gave the driftwood a nudge. It tilted a little in the mud, but otherwise seemed stuck fast.

"Or something like it. You won't sink too far, but you might lose your shoes."

Beside her, Johnny scanned either side of the shore, squinting in the mid-morning sunlight. "Bet you there's lurkers down there, Reese."

"In the quicksand?" She took a few steps back, as if preparing to make a running jump. "Don't be ridiculous." Her accent mangled the word such that it took Wyatt a minute to figure out what she meant. "Anyway, the last time I checked, they were still caught in the current downstream."

The image Wyatt conjured up was somehow both comical and disturbing. "So...bad place for a river cruise, is what you're saying."

Thérèse shrugged. "I wouldn't recommend it. Follow me." She took a few more steps back and then made a running jump onto a flat brown stone, really more like a boulder, near the middle of the river. Three more deft hops onto smaller, less stable rocks later and she was on the other side without even getting her feet wet.

"Guess you've done this a few times."

She grinned, reaching up to fix her hair. A few stray locks had escaped her topknot and fallen in front of her face. She wasn't even breathing hard—Johnny had been muttering for the last half-mile about sore feet, and Wyatt's hamstrings were starting to ache, but if Thérèse was wearing down she didn't show it.

"I fell in the first time," she said, chuckling. "Jo fished me out, and we had a rather damp walk home. Now you try."

When he hesitated, Johnny nudged him in the ribs, grinning. "Watch out for lurkers, Wyatt."

Wyatt resisted the temptation to flip him off as he made his running jump to the first stepping stone. It was less of a leap than Thérèse had made it seem with her shorter legs. He picked his way over to the other side of the river in a couple more steps. One rock wobbled precariously under his feet; his foot slipped and he was only just able to catch his balance at the last second. Some cold water still managed to seep into his shoe, and he landed on the opposite bank with a _squelch._

Johnny followed close behind him. His shorter legs and less than graceful demeanor made the crossing seem more difficult. On the second to last step—the one Wyatt had almost slipped on—his balance almost failed him entirely and he wobbled, arms pinwheeling.

Wyatt, without thinking, reached out and grabbed him by his heavy coat, lifting him across the last foot with a grunt. Johnny was heavier than he looked.

He let go as soon as Johnny's boots touched dry land, backing away. Johnny quirked an eyebrow up at him, his expression somewhere between irritation and surprise. "Thanks," he said after a pause. Then he pulled his hat down and moved ahead, his face unreadable.

Wyatt shrugged in acknowledgment. Thérèse snickered at them both. "Let's go, you two. Two more miles to Stone Gap."

* * *

In the end, they went around the small, sleepy town of Stone Gap rather than through it, following a railway track that bent around its outskirts. It was safer that way, Johnny explained. The town was a magnet for scavengers and bandits, and when they weren't in residence, walkers usually were.

Maddie didn't seem to care much about dangers like that. She reappeared at the railway station to wave at them. Almost as soon as Wyatt could blink she'd disappeared again, off down the road into town.

"I hope she makes it back all right," Thérèse murmured, frowning after her. The noon sun beat down overhead, making her sweat despite the cool air. Wyatt could feel a few beads of sweat starting to run down the back of his neck, too.

Johnny just shrugged. "She can take care of herself. We gotta keep moving."

Wyatt hesitated as the others started down the track, weaving their way through brown weeds and clumps of kudzu. "Shouldn't we...there's gotta be supplies in town, right?" _Maybe people_ , added a small voice at the back of his head. He and Eddie had had an unspoken pact— _avoid cities—_ but that didn't stop Wyatt from wondering _maybe_ at every town he'd ever passed by.

"That's Maddie's job," Johnny answered. He didn't even look back. "C'mon."

Thérèse seemed more sympathetic, smiling as Wyatt jogged after them. "It's been picked almost clean. That's why we're looking farther south."

"Not much farther, if you two girls don't hurry it up." Johnny's mood sounded like it was darkening as they day went on. He was starting to remind Wyatt a little of Troy.

* * *

The railroad tracks took them in a half-circle around town and then back toward the river. Here it was properly a river, more than twenty feet across and flowing fast and dark. Debris whipped by sometimes, when Wyatt paused long enough to look—wood scraps, pieces of boats. Sometimes he thought he saw a body bobbing along the rapid currents.

Sunset found them another half-dozen miles south of Stone Gap; only the town's tall church spire was visible, rising above the tallest pine trees. The ground had begun to slope downward, winding its way down into a wooded valley below. Full dark had already fallen there; all Wyatt could make out were vague shadows of trees.

Thérèse and Johnny stopped at a bend in the river, where an aging wooden boathouse creaked and listed in the currents. "We'll stop here for the night," Thérèse said, squinting at one of her maps. In the fading light, she had to hold it almost up to her broad snub nose to read it. "There should be a road near here. Tomorrow we'll try and find it, see what kind of shape it's in."

Wyatt cast a doubtful glance over the small boathouse. It creaked as if to answer him, bobbing with a sudden swell in the river. "Is that junk heap safe?"

Thérèse shrugged. "Hasn't failed anyone yet. Not that we're out here that often, but...if you'd rather sleep up a tree, be my guest."

 _No thanks_. He let Johnny go in first to make sure the place was clear. It was; nothing more threatening inside than a few spiders, and maybe some mice or rats. A few canoes listed on racks, looking like they hadn't been touched for years even before the apocalypse.

Thérèse cleared off the ground in front of the entrance and began building up a modest fire. Full dark was almost on them by now; Johnny searched the last pair of canoes by flashlight. "Hey, Wyatt. I got something." The canoe creaked alarmingly as Johnny pulled something out of the bottom. An oar tipped over the side and clattered onto the floor, where it shattered in a small spray of mold and rotted wood.

"Probably just a life jacket, bro. Leave it." Although in that case, Wyatt was half-tempted to take it and put it on. He was all too aware of the floor shifting under his feet, as well as the square of open water at his back.

"No, man—" With a final grunt, he pulled the object free and set it on the floor, pointing his flashlight at it. "Look. Hey, Reese! Come look at this!"

The item in question turned out to be a cloth shopping bag, covered in dirt and mouse droppings, but a distinct egg yolk yellow under all that. And as if that wasn't enough of a clue, the Howe's logo was printed on both sides of the bag in bright, cheerfully offensive blue.

Thérèse, little more than a silhouette against the growing fire behind her, moved forward to inspect it. Her thin eyebrows knit together in confusion. "Jason didn't mention anything about leaving a supply cache here." Johnny nudged the bag open with his flashlight, and then Thérèse began to curse softly in French.

The bag was half-full, and inside were boxes of rifle and pistol ammunition—Wyatt counted two each, probably full from how heavy Johnny had made the bag seem—along with some dented cans of black-eyed peas and mixed fruit. A bottle of scotch, with what looked like a few shots missing, and a first aid kit rounded out the collection. Johnny reached in and nudged the kit open: well-stocked.

"Somebody left us a hell of a present. Holy shit."

" _Merde_ ," Thérèse agreed, shaking her head. "It might not be one of ours. _Probably_ isn't ours." Johnny lifted out the bottle of scotch and opened it, sniffing. "Just because it's in a Howe's bag… Someone would have noticed a theft like this. The first aid kit, if nothing else. Someone else must be using this place as a supply dump or...something."

Johnny shrugged and stood up, offering her the open bottle. When she waved it off he grinned, taking a swig. "Either way, we're set for the night. You cook the beans. I'm gonna take another look around. C'mon, Wyatt."

Their brief search came up empty. No tracks or footprints of any kind; either no one had passed this way in a while, or one of the recent fall storms had washed all trace of them away. It was too dark to conduct a more thorough search, and by then the smell of cooking food drew them back to the fire.

Thérèse had cooked the peas right in their cans, for want of any cookware. She'd also used some of the scotch, and torn up some of the jerky they'd brought with them and thrown it into the cans. The results almost bordered on tasty, Wyatt had to admit.

When they'd finished by passing around the cans of fruit, Thérèse went right back to studying one of her maps, plotting out the route for tomorrow. Wyatt found himself just trying to fight off sleep. It had been a long day, and his full stomach only served to make him more tired.

Johnny, meanwhile, stretched out so far his boots were almost in the fire and belched. "We gotta pick up the pace tomorrow, Reese."

"I know," Thérèse murmured, her attention more on the map in her lap. The space between Howe's—marked with a tiny black star—and the boathouse was full of marks. Wyatt couldn't tell what half the symbols were supposed to represent; Thérèse seemed to favor abstract art. The area beyond was empty, marked only with a penciled in question mark. "It's slow going without Jo. You know how terrible I am with distances."

That shut Johnny right up. His tan face dropped into a scowl and he turned away, prodding at the dirt with his foot.

Thérèse's mouth made a silent _oh_ when she realized what she'd said. The map crumpled as she set it aside. "Johnny, I didn't mean—"

"I'm not the one who shot her. Wish people would quit treating me like I did." After a moment he stood up, shrugging his heavy jacket back on. "I gotta go take a piss."

"Johnny—"

Too late, or else he was ignoring her. His footsteps receded into a distant crunch of loose stones under his boots as he made his way down to the riverside.

"The hell was that?"

Thérèse sighed, pausing to take a long drink from her canteen before she answered. From the stricken look on her face, Wyatt thought she could use something a little stronger than water. "It was an accident," she began, her voice dropping down to a low whisper. "They were searching some of the homes higher up the mountain for supplies. We had some trouble with the mountain people, back in the early days, but lately… We thought they were gone."

Wyatt winced a little. _No cities_ , had been his and Eddie's first unspoken agreement. _No creepy mountain backroads_ had been the other. The people living up there tended to have deep roots—and too many guns they were too willing to use defending said roots. Not Wyatt's crowd. "One of them shot her?"

Thérèse nodded. Her lips had turned into a flat, dark line. "Just a warning shot; the bullet grazed her hip. It could have been much worse. She could have been killed." She hesitated for so long, Wyatt almost thought that was the end of the story. Finally she cleared her throat and began again. "Bill told them not to go, that it was still too dangerous up there. But Johnny and Jo were so dead set..."

Wyatt shrugged, glancing back toward the river. "It's not like they knew."

"No, but that hasn't stopped Bill from finding new and creative ways to say _I told you so_." She sighed, shaking her head. "I hear Carlos threw him out of the infirmary, so Johnny's been getting the brunt of it.

"Either way, it's been...well, a rough few days. I thought maybe getting Johnny out for a few days might help cool some heads. I can fix a guilty conscience. I don't know where to begin to help Jo." Her voice cracked then and she stopped, clearing her throat. When Wyatt glanced back over, she looked pointedly away. "Sorry. Is there any scotch left?"

He grabbed the bottle and handed it over, almost tempted to take one for himself along the way. "Plenty."

She took it and promptly upended the bottle, drinking long and deep. When she handed it back it was much lighter than it had been before. Wyatt thought for a moment, then took a short drink himself. It burned hot and bright all the way down his throat.

The crackling of the fire filled the silence after that. Wyatt thought about a second drink, but set the bottle down between them instead. Thérèse ignored it in favor of folding up the map she'd crumpled. Down by the riverside, a lighter flared in the dark. Wyatt could just make out Johnny as a smear of dark shadows, the end of his newly lit cigarette a dim orange flare.

"You find a lot of people on runs like this?" Wyatt asked, clearing his throat. A small lump had formed in his throat, probably from the scotch. "I mean...you know, normal people. Not the kind who shoot first and ask questions later."

"That sounds pretty normal these days." Thérèse chuckled, shaking her head. "But no. I try to avoid people on these runs. Bill prefers that too, I think. Diplomacy is Tavia's job."

"But if you did find somebody friendly out here, you'd tell her? You'd send somebody out to look?"

Thérèse shot him a quizzical look out of the corner of her eye. "I might mention it. What happens after that is up to Bill and Tavia." Then the proverbial lightbulb clicked on and her face softened. He recognized that sad, knowing smile. He'd gotten it from Shel and Vince and people like them too many times to count. Now he regretted ever bringing the subject up.

"Tavia did say...was it Vince? That other man in your group?"

He stared at her blankly for a second, trying not to laugh. "No. Shit, no. I mean...not like that. Somebody else. It's a long story."

Thérèse's expression had turned quizzical again, and unaccountably curious. "I could have sworn Tavia said something about a boyfriend…" If she was fishing for a story, he wasn't about to bite. "Maybe I'm remembering wrong." Her small, broad hand hovered above his arm, as if she were about to pat it, but then she drew back. "Either way, we do still have room back home. If your mystery man ever turns up."

That struck Wyatt as a pretty large _if_ , and one that only grew bigger by the day.

"I'm going to go check on Johnny," Thérèse said after an awkward pause. "Just to make sure he didn't fall in."

Wyatt nodded and didn't say anything, staring into the fire until his eyes watered from the smoke and the bright, glaring heat.


	5. The Herd, Part I

**Notes:** This chapter (and the one after it) contain some scenes of explicit violence, on par with the source material.

* * *

 **5\. The Herd, Part I**

Thérèse and Amanda brought the news back on a pale morning in what Bonnie thought was early December.

"A herd," Thérèse said, voice grim, as she recapped her marker. "That's the best way I can describe it. _Horde_ just seems too...small." They were gathered in the former employee break room, folding chairs arrayed around the dusty whiteboard on the outside wall.

Bonnie's attention waned as Thérèse and Carver went back and forth, exchanging finer details. The map—done in what she hoped wasn't a prophetic shade of orange-red—was in typical Thérèse style, all angular lines and abstract scratches. But Bonnie could recognize all the landmarks by now; Pine Creek Pass, close to the east, and the Blue Ridge Parkway farther west where it wound out of the mountains.

What held Bonnie's interest the most, though, was the vast blank circle at the southern edge of the map, where the town of Stone Gap usually sat. _Sorta looks like a hungry void_ , she thought, and tried to shake off a chill that didn't come entirely from the bitter winter air.

"Seems to me like we need options, Bill." George's normally booming voice was now dour and quiet. He sat to Bonnie's left, in a folding chair almost comically small for him; Bonnie kept finding herself tilting sideways, trying to give him more elbow room. "Bill?" George tried again, but Carver's eyes were fixed on the map. He stood in front of the whiteboard looking lost in thought.

"We could burn 'em out," Troy drawled from near the door. He'd spent the entire meeting there, leaning against the wall and picking dirt from under his nails with a pocketknife. "Set that shit on fire."

Vera, across from Bonnie and barely visible in an overcoat three sizes too big for her, snorted out a laugh. "What, one disaster ain't big enough for you? You've gotta throw in another one? Jesus, Mary and Joseph." This last all slurred together into a blur, as oft-repeated sayings tended to do.

Troy grunted back a reply, something unkind about Vera's mother. Bonnie only heard about every other word, a fact which didn't upset her much.

Vera almost seemed to puff herself up before she started her retort. "Listen here—"

Tavia cut her off with an upraised hand. "I agree with Vera. Well, in spirit if not to the letter," she amended with a small smile. Vera's scowl remained unchanged, but she'd at least slumped back in her chair. "It's an efficient idea, Troy, but there's too many variables. We might destroy the...well, the herd, but burn down half the state in the process."

"And then I'd be redrawing all our maps for the next year," Thérèse added with a faint, mocking grin. No one laughed. Bonnie never could tell when Reese was trying to be funny and when she was actually being serious. The accent threw her off.

In the silence that followed, Thérèse abandoned the whiteboard to take up the empty seat between Bonnie and Tavia. Her ink-stained hand reached out and found Tavia's own, and their fingers intertwined tightly. Only then did Thérèse lean back in her chair, seeming at least somewhat reassured.

George meanwhile kept looking from the map over to Carver and then back again. His broad, dusky face was pinched into a frown. "We could divert 'em, maybe. Get some noisemakers together—car alarm or something—and draw them off east. Or back south, if we could sneak around 'em. They'd follow the noise and leave us well enough alone."

"That could work," Tavia agreed. "We'd need to make enough noise to distract the whole group, though. And lead them far enough away that they won't wander back. Maybe if we hooked speakers up to one of the trucks..." She trailed off, murmuring to herself about all the different possibilities.

"We'd...have to lead 'em pretty far for that," Bonnie ventured—the first time she'd spoken up the entire meeting. She wasn't even meant to be here, but Gary had refused to get out of bed, pleading a stomach bug. Bonnie knew by now that was code for a hangover.

He used that excuse to get out of all kinds of work, but this was the first time he'd sent her to a formal meeting in his stead. She still felt for all the world like a child invited, for the first time, to the adults' table at the holidays. Small, out of place, and quite possibly in over her head. "And even if we did...I mean, we'd just be dumping the problem on somebody else's doorstep."

Troy smirked at her. "See? We should just burn the fuckers."

Sitting beside Troy, Luke frowned, scratching at the stubble on his pale jaw. "Fire ain't gonna fix this, Troy."

"Hell yeah it will. Those fuckers burn like everything else; I've seen 'em."

"Sure, they burn," Vera shot back, tugging her jacket sleeves down over her clenched hands. "Doesn't mean they quit moving."

Luke carried on like he hadn't heard either of them, reaching up now to rake his fingers through his tousled brown hair. "We still got the river between us and them. They might not try and cross. And—and even if they do—" he was starting to trip over his words— "what if we drove them into the river? Like down near Parker's Run, where the current's so bad? They'd get washed downstream, hell, maybe out to sea."

"If there's as many as Reese says," George answered, "they'd be just as liable to dam up the river. Then we'd have a flood on our hands."

Luke's jaw had taken on a particularly stubborn set. "Well, we gotta do _something_. Bonnie's right." Bonnie started to shrink back as everyone's attention turned towards her, a blush creeping up her cheeks. "We can't just leave this mess for somebody else to clean up."

Troy snorted, flicking his knife closed and jamming it into the pocket of his khakis. "What the fuck makes it _our_ mess? Fuck off."

Thérèse cleared her throat, hopping back into the conversation before it could boil over into an argument. "What if we just...got out of their way?" She nodded toward her map. "It won't be particularly pleasant this time of year, but we _could_ go into the mountains for a few days. There's that resort...what is it, Otter Lake? That's only a couple days' walk away. The creatures wouldn't follow us if we went quietly."

"The folks up on the mountain might not take kindly to us moving in next door," George said, a note of warning in his voice. "Suppose we could always sic Troy and the boys on them first, but that might just cause more trouble."

Vera snorted again. "You folks wanna carry all the supplies, the little ones, and the pregnant lady that far in _December_ , you all be my guest. I'd just as soon stay right here and get eaten."

Carver cleared his throat, just once, but the sound was enough to cut the conversation short and draw every eye in the room to him. "We hold our ground. The way I see it, that's our best option." He put his hands on his hips, and Bonnie thought he might start to pace the room, but instead he stayed still—as still as a statue.

"We're secure, we're well-armed, and we got plenty of supplies to last us through a siege if it comes to that. We batten down the hatches and wait for the storm to break over us. The herd'll pass on by, and that'll be that. And I don't want to hear another word outta any of you about turning tail and abandoning our home."

Vera nodded, and after a moment of thought Thérèse did, too. Troy muttered something about putting together some molotov cocktails, just in case, but even he nodded his agreement. Tavia and George still looked doubtful, and Luke was frowning. As for Bonnie herself, she kept her own face carefully neutral, gauging the reaction of the room before she cast her vote one way or the other.

"Bill," Tavia began, "maybe we should give some thought to George's idea. Just to draw off some of the herd—hell, maybe all of it if we're lucky. It could make life a lot easier."

"Stan and I can rig something up this afternoon," George added. Now that they had a working plan he was back to his normal, boisterous self, leaning forward with his broad hands on his knees. "One of the trucks and a stereo should do it. Or hell, a marathon runner with a bullhorn."

Thérèse snickered. "I think we're fresh out of those, George."

Carver was quiet for another long moment as he studied the map again. "All right. George, that's your project. Clear the volunteers with me before you send 'em out." Then all at once he was in motion, nodding to each person in turn as he paced the room. "Vera, you get a detailed inventory of our food stocks to me by tonight. If we're running low on anything, we're about out of time to send the scavengers out for it.

"Troy, you'd best whip your guards into shape. This ain't the time for stupid mistakes, and I ain't gonna tolerate any. Tavia, you'll help me break the news. There's some liable to lose their heads over this, and I'm counting on you to head off a panic."

"You won't have to worry, Bill."

"You're damn right I won't. Bonnie, what's the armory looking like?"

Bonnie almost jumped clear out of her chair. "I—well, it ain't bad." She forced the nervous stammer out of her voice through sheer force of will. "But I wouldn't call it _great_ , either. If it comes down to it I don't think we have enough bullets to take on a herd. Not one the size Reese was talkin' about."

Carver's smile was faint but warm. Almost paternal. "Which is why we're not planning on it. Luke, you help her with the inventory."

"Well, sure, but shouldn't Gary—"

Carver carried on talking right over Luke's objections. "And I want a plan to distribute as many weapons as we can as fast as we can, should it come down to that. Not that I think it will, mind. But you and Troy can figure that one out between you. And tell Gary to drag his sorry ass on up to my office. If he can find his way through his fucking hangover."

Bonnie bobbed her head in a quick, eager nod. "Sure, Bill. Right away."

"Then I'd suggest we all get to work," Carver concluded, turning back to stare at the map again. "Seems we've got us a siege to withstand."

* * *

The men they'd sent out with their makeshift noisemakers still hadn't returned. Thérèse's scouting party came back claiming that the herd looked a little smaller now, but most of it had made it across the river and was coming on like a wave bound for shore. Howe's battened down its hatches, just like Carver had instructed, and waited and watched for the tide of dead to roll by.

That was the plan. Until the actual storm clouds rolled in.

The slushy mix of ice and sleet and rain broke over Pine Creek Pass on the second day, after the teeming horde had begun to fill the streets. Flash floods filled the creek outside Howe's, flooded the latrines, and began to overtake the parking lot. Common speculation was that half the town had washed away by now.

Penned in by the flood waters, confused by the occasional crack of thunder and lightning, the herd began to gather around Howe's. And it did not move.

The men with the noisemakers never did come back.

When Rebecca woke Tavia on the fourth day, just before dawn, it was almost a relief. Or at least a break in the _waiting_. "Sorry to wake you," Rebecca began in a whisper. "Everything's fine. Bill just wants to see you up in his office."

Which by definition meant everything was _not_ fine. Rebecca's white-knuckle grip on her shoulder implied the same.

Tavia waved her off, trying to bury her grimace under a yawn that wasn't completely feigned. "Give me a minute."

Rebecca nodded, leaving without another word.

The blankets beside her shifted and moved as she started to rise. Somewhere under the heavy quilt Tavia thought she heard some sleepy murmurings in French.

"It's nothing, sweetheart." _I hope_. She nudged blankets and a tangle of ink dark hair aside until she found Thérèse's cheek, where she pressed a lingering kiss. For luck, maybe. "Go back to sleep."

Thérèse mumbled back something incoherent and fell straight back asleep, pulling the quilt back over her head. Tavia had always envied her that talent. She got up and tried to pull her hair back into some sort of order as she picked her way through all the cots and sleeping bags. There weren't many still abed, even this early in the morning, and the ones that were didn't sleep easy.

When she arrived at Carver's office, the blinds were shut and Carver was pacing the length of the room behind his desk. George and Vera were there too, George leaning against a cabinet, Vera in the extra chair in front of Carver's desk. Troy hovered near the old employee lockers, chewing on a fingernail.

She was just about to close the door behind her when someone caught it and slipped inside at the last second. Gary, arriving late, as usual. He spared her a nod but very studiously avoided looking at Carver at all, and took up a spot next to Troy. There were circles under his gray eyes and his skin still looked an unhealthy sallow color, but at least he didn't look hungover. Tavia still couldn't figure out where he kept getting the alcohol from, but at least he was abstaining for now. That mystery would just have to wait another day.

"Bill," she began, closing the door behind her at last. "What can I do for you?" Saying _good morning_ felt absurd at this point. She moved to stand next to George, who smiled and nodded to her in greeting.

"What you can do," Carver growled, scowling at everyone in the room and no one at the same time, "is get this damn herd away from our door."

Tavia snorted at the back of her throat. "I'd love to, Bill, but they don't seem to want to negotiate." Carver, unimpressed by her sense of humor, only growled again and started pacing faster, like a wild animal pacing the length of its cage. He looked as if he hadn't slept the whole four days of the siege. Maybe, knowing Carver, he hadn't. The bags and circles under his eyes stood out like bruises, and the gray stubble on his cheeks had started to erupt into a full beard.

Vera stretched out in her seat until her boots nearly went under Carver's desk. "Bill's right. We're just about out of water, even with what we got from the storms." Tavia's glance went up to the skylight; the light filtering in was a mottled gray and blue. Early morning hoarfrost bloomed on a few panes. No sign of any more rain. "And I don't know about y'all, but I am _damn_ tired of pissing in a bucket."

Howe's _had_ taken on a certain aroma in the past few days, Tavia had to admit—the smell of too much humanity crammed into too-tight quarters with no access to the latrines outside and no water for bathing. Some of the guards had taken to pissing off the side of the roof. Or at least they had until Carver had found out about it.

George nodded, his lips quirking into a frown. He was starting a beard to match Carver's, though his was coming in straight gray. It clashed with the dark curls on his head. "I agree with Vera. We've already got a morale problem, Bill, and pretty soon it'll be a supply one. We gotta do something."

"Still got the molotovs." Troy stretched, stifling a yawn; he'd just come off the night guard shift. "Just burn the fuckers."

"Lord have mercy," Vera grumbled, "but I'm starting to agree with Troy."

George chuckled—a deep, rumbling sound Tavia could almost feel in her bones. "There's a first time for everything, Vera."

Carver rapped his knuckles on his desk then, calling them all to order. Tavia jumped a little at the noise. They'd spent a long few days trying to stay as quiet as possible to avoid attracting the herd's attention. That rap on the desk felt like the loudest thing she'd heard in days. "I agree. It's high past time we did something about our barbarians at the gate. Now, I got some ideas in mind—"

George's bushy black eyebrows shot up in surprise. "You do?"

"—but it's gonna take the whole group to pull it off," Carver carried on, ignoring him. "Troy, Gary, you get Bonnie and Luke up. Get started distributing the guns like we planned. Vera, you get folks up and fed. No sense going into a fight on an empty stomach."

"Bill, what exactly _is_ your plan?" George scratched at a bug bite on his forearm. His section of the living quarters had another bedbug infestation, but clearing it out had gone straight to the back burner. "Unless you've got a bunch of extra bullets we don't know about..."

Tavia had similar concerns, but she was willing to wait and let Carver finish. He had yet to steer them on the wrong course; he'd earned the benefit of the doubt, at least.

As if reading her thoughts, Carver pointed to a city map half-open on his desk. It was absolutely covered in scouting notes from Thérèse; Tavia recognized the sharp, angular lines of her handwriting even at this distance. Carver's fingertip had landed on a spot on the far side of town, marked off by danger signs. _Is that the mine?_

"We ain't about to fight the whole damn herd. Just gotta thin 'em out enough for a few folks to break through. Draw 'em off our backs."

Tavia frowned. "You're going to have a hell of a time keeping them out of the building in the meantime, Bill. Once we get their attention, they're not going to stop." She'd seen it herself, back when the apocalypse was new and she and Thérèse were just trying to escape Delaware.

George nodded up to the skylight. "Put everybody up on the roof. Barricade the stairs behind us. Any lurkers that break in'll make a mess, but we can clear it out once the herd's gone."

Tavia liked the notion of lurkers in the building even less than the idea of them outside. _It could still work, though_ , she thought. _Just might get messy_.

But Carver was shaking his head. "We'll put some up on the roof. The kids, Cassidy, those we can't afford to put in harm's way. But we need some folks on the ground. It won't be easy, but we've gotta keep a path clear. Otherwise those that are going out to the mine won't be able to get through."

"Bill. That's suicide." The words came out like a faint hiss between George's teeth.

"More like pretty fuckin' stupid," Vera agreed, sitting up straighter. "You ain't putting me or Daph down there."

"You'll go back where I tell you and be grateful for it," Carver snapped back with a voice like iron. It was enough to send Vera scooting back a few inches, chair and all, her eyebrows arched in surprise. "Now get to work. Troy, Gary, you too."

Troy and Gary all but vanished out the door without a word. They were a little less tone deaf than Vera, Tavia thought—but only just—and knew when not to push their luck. As for Vera, she glanced at Tavia and George on her way out the door, her narrow face decidedly surly.

"Ever thought about investing in a muzzle, George?"

In normal circumstances that would've drawn at least a chuckle or some wry response. George let it pass without even a smile this time, all his attention still fixed on Carver. Vera left with one last irritated huff, slamming the office door shut in her wake. Tavia and George both jumped.

Carver, not phased, motioned them in closer. "Let me tell you what I got in mind."

* * *

Shel turned the pistol over in her hand and tried, without success, to swallow the knot in her throat. Tavia and Troy had gathered everyone together and run them through the plan three times, but knowing exactly what she was meant to do didn't make the _doing_ any easier.

Cold pricked at her bare fingertips. The day had dawned cold and gray and wet, and it didn't seem like it was going to get any better. If they were really unlucky, it might even start to snow.

Below, down in the garden center, George and Jason—an older black man she'd never gotten the chance to talk to—were rearranging the shelves, pushing them closer to the outer fence. The idea, as Tavia had explained it, was to put some people on the upper shelves and let them cull the herd from there. A group on the roof would be doing the same, while a third manned a crude barricade in the delivery bay in event of a breach.

They would winnow the herd down to whatever was deemed _manageable numbers_ , until there was a break in the dead sea large enough for some brave— _suicidal_ , she thought—volunteers to break through and draw off the rest. The whole plan sounded crazy, but Tavia seemed convinced, which went a way toward settling her nerves. They had to try something, didn't they?

The noise of the moving shelves had already started to drawn in the herd. Shel could hear the _thumps_ of bodies slamming into the walls below, pressing together in some instinctual search for a way in.

The wind up here cut sharp, with a smell on its edge like damp rot. _Better up here than downstairs_ , she thought, even as another wind gust cut right through her sweatshirt and made her shiver. She wrapped her arm around her sister's shoulders, hugging her tight.

"Stay close to me," she murmured, and Becca nodded against her arm. Not even a hint of protest—that alone told Shel how scared she was. "You'll be fine." She said it as much for her own sake as Becca's.

That was when Johnny elbowed his way through the small crowd gathering around, clearing a path for Carver like he was some sort of trumped up honor guard. Whatever dignified impression he'd been going for, it was ruined the second he opened his mouth. "Shit, there you guys are."

"What is it? Tavia already gave me my assignment. And my gun."

"Change of plans," Carver answered, his voice flat. As he said it his attention was more on the people manning the walls than it was her. "You're going down to the yard."

"The yard?" Her eyes flicked downward; was it her imagination, or was the wrought iron fence already starting to buckle?

"That place is a death trap," Becca muttered, echoing her thoughts. "I'm not going."

Carver's attention swung around to Becca now, his scowl lifting. "Not you, just your sister. Tell me something, Becca. You know how to shoot a gun?"

Becca glanced sideways at Shel before she bobbed her head. "Yeah. Sure."

" _Sort of_ ," Shel amended, nudging her sister gently in the ribs. Becca scowled right back, her chin jutting out in a faint pout. She knew the fundamentals, of course—Roman had seen to that—but she'd yet to put it into actual practice. Shel had been hoping that day was still a long way off.

"Good a time as any to learn. You got plenty of targets. Johnny, you take her. Shel, with me."

Shel felt her grip on Becca's shoulders tightening. "I'm not leaving Becca. If anyone's going to teach her how to shoot, it should be me." She hoped Carver had forgotten—or maybe had never been told—that she could barely hit the broad side of a barn.

Carver turned to regard her slowly, without blinking. Shel thought he looked exhausted, like he'd aged a year for every day they'd been trapped by the herd. For a second her heart ached in sympathy. "That ain't your call to make, Shel."

"Shel—" Becca fidgeted at her side, trying to worm her way out of her iron grip.

"She's my sister and she's _thirteen_ , Bill. That makes it my call. You have no right—"

The look on Carver's face stopped her mid-sentence and nearly sent her rocking back in her seat, all sympathy vanishing. His eyes were dark and hard as flint, and she had the sudden, unshakeable feeling that he wanted to slap her, and that only a thin thread of self-control held him back.

She didn't think she wanted to see what would happen if that thread ever snapped.

When he finally spoke, his words were precise and measured, and as sharp as ice. "This ain't a democracy. You'll do as I tell you, and—"

At that same moment, the radio at Carver's hip crackled. George's voice, something about getting ready to barricade the stairs. Everyone seemed to frown at once.

"Shel," Carver repeated, "with me. I need a medic downstairs, and I ain't about to tell you a third time."

Before Shel could come up with a reply, Becca wormed out of her grip, sighing in vague irritation. "You're all losers. God. Johnny, let's just go."

Johnny rocked back on his heels a little, seeming amused. "You got it, princess." He took her by the arm, and they melted into the crowd before Shel could even think to call her back. Or to tell her to be safe. A knot wound its way around her throat.

"That's one problem solved," Carver grumbled, extending his hand out to Shel. "Now you coming, or am I gonna have to drag you?"

It almost made for an amusing image. Almost. If she wasn't so certain he meant it literally.

Shel wiped the sweat off her palms and stood up, ignoring Carver's outstretched hand. "If you insist."

* * *

Wyatt hadn't been up on the top shelf more than five seconds before he'd decided this was the stupidest plan he'd ever heard.

Well, second stupidest. First place still went to the time Eddie had thought it was a good idea to pick a fight with Tiny Carlos. Still though, this was right up there. He looked out at the writhing mass of dead, decaying faces—wrinkled his nose a little at the smell of rot, which was far stronger out here than it had been inside Howe's—and then back at the semi-automatic in his hand. Bonnie had only given him one magazine, apparently all they had to spare.

 _We're rationing bullets, so let's go waste a bunch on a herd. Great_ _fucking_ _plan._

Some of the walkers, lured in by the noise, were already trying to squeeze through their fence. Decayed arms and torn scraps of clothing flailed through the gaps. Hank stopped mid-climb up the ladder to pull a hatchet from his belt and lop off a hand that had grabbed his pants leg.

"You okay there, bro?" Wyatt was already in position—flat on his stomach, propped up on his elbows, legs dangling—and couldn't move out of the way. Hank stepped over him to take up the gap between him and Vera.

"Yeah. Fine. Handsy fuckin' assholes, right?"

Wyatt shrugged in agreement and pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. A hushed, anticipatory silence had fallen as the last few people climbed into position and Troy slid the yard gate shut. Wyatt knew Shel was on the shelf below him somewhere, though he wasn't sure where Russell had gone. Hopefully to the roof with Bonnie, but more likely out to the loading dock with the other sacrificial lambs.

Wood and metal creaked around him, and Wyatt wondered for a second if these shelves were meant to hold all this weight. Then he had the image of the whole thing collapsing and everyone landing in a heap in front of a herd of bewildered, hungry walkers and almost laughed out loud.

Troy had a radio on his hip, and he grabbed it as he climbed onto the shelf underneath, grumbling and muttering things like _out of the way, asshole_ as he went. "Yard's set, Bill."

"Roof's set too," Tavia chimed in.

Carver's reply came back immediately, grim under all the static. "Good. Johnny, let's go."

Wyatt glanced up just in time to see the bottles, their lit fuses bright like beacons against the gray sky, go sailing over the edge of the roof. Three molotovs, spiraling down toward the parking lot. They smashed into the herd with a cacophony of breaking glass and groans from the walkers as they tried to find the source of the noise.

The kerosene ignited a split second later, to a faint cheer from the roof, charring dead flesh and beginning to spread like wildfire in the heat of summer.

The herd started to mill and split apart in confusion, both drawn by the noise of the fire and repelled by its heat, and that was when Wyatt and the others opened fire.


	6. The Herd, Part II

**6\. The Herd, Part II**

When the shooting finally began in earnest, Becca perched on the edge of the roof and, looking down at the writhing mass of dead, tried to remember everything Johnny had just taught her. And everything Roman had taught her before that, a long, long time ago.

She didn't think she'd made a single shot yet, although with all the crossfire it was impossible to tell whose bullet wound up where. On the other hand, with this many targets, she was guaranteed to at least hit _something_.

Eventually.

She set her rifle down and blew on her hands in a vain attempt to chase the chill out of her fingers. The sun still hadn't cut through the low-hanging winter clouds, the type of clouds that always washed all the color out of the world and tinged it gray instead. The recent storms made the air feel wet and cold, and Becca wished she'd thought to wear her gloves.

In her next breath she picked up her rifle again, lined up a shot, took it. The gun jumped in her hand and knocked her backwards—she was still trying to get used to the recoil—and she was sure that was _her_ shot that went hopelessly wide. It pinged off one of the lampposts before she lost track of it.

" _Dammit_." Even her sister was a better shot than that, and Shel's aim was _awful_.

"You're not holding your breath." Becca glanced up as a pair of rather worn tennis shoes popped into her peripheral vision. A girl a couple years older stood at her side, a crossbow in her hand. "Watch me," she added in the same casual monotone. She lined up her shot and took it without even seeming to hesitate, and the bolt embedded itself in the eye of a walker shambling through the handicapped parking. It teetered and then collapsed backwards, knocking over two other walkers behind it.

"Holy crap," Becca murmured with a growing sense of awe. "Good shot."

The girl shrugged. "I was aiming for his forehead." She dropped down into a seat, reaching over to make a few minute adjustments to Becca's aim. "Just hold your breath right when you're going to take the shot. It helps keep the gun steady." She paused, her blue-gray eyes shining for a moment with amusement. "And don't let the recoil knock you off the roof. I can't believe Johnny gave you that heap of junk."

She pointed to a walker near the center of the herd, one that had caught fire but wasn't burning hot enough to go down. It teetered but generally stayed put, too distracted by the fire to move. "He's easy. Take him out." While Becca lined up her shot, the girl shook her brown hair out of its ponytail and re-fixed it, gathering up the loose strands that had fallen into her eyes.

Becca did exactly as the girl told her, resisting the urge to cross her fingers for good luck while she was at it. Held her breath, squeezed the trigger, tried not to go sprawling back on her ass from the recoil.

The walker went down in a limp heap, its brain and a good chunk of its skull splattered on the walkers around it.

" _Holy crap_ ," Becca repeated, more to herself than anything. It was _gross_ , but at the same time almost exhilarating. She'd done that. _She had_. Her heart was pounding in her ears so loud she almost couldn't hear anything else. Or maybe that was just from all the gunfire around them.

Beside her, the girl fired off another shot with her crossbow before she turned back, grinning. One of her top front teeth was missing, turning her grin into something more wolfish. "Nice shot."

"Thanks. I'm Becca, by the way." She picked a new target and took a second shot, hoping the first hadn't been some kind of lucky fluke. Her first shot caught it in the chest, but the second put it down for good.

"I'm Madeleine. Call me Maddie."

Becca's eyes widened a little. She'd heard stories about Maddie, mostly from her two brothers, but never thought she'd get a chance to actually meet her. She spent all her time on scavenging and scouting runs, or on guard patrol. _Not stuck in_ school _with a couple of nine year olds_.

Maddie was taller than Becca had been expecting, and more mousy-looking than battle scarred. Although she did wear a black leather jacket over her gray UVA sweatshirt. It was a size too big for her, with what looked like slashes from a knife across the back, and in that instant Becca decided Maddie was one of the coolest people she'd ever met.

"Is it true you killed a bandit once with nothing but a razor blade?" The question was out before she could think to stop it, the press of dead below momentarily forgotten.

Maddie rolled her eyes. "It was a machete," she sighed, reloading her crossbow again. "Don't believe anything my idiot brothers tell you." Even as she said it she glanced over toward the center of the roof, where Reggie was trying to keep the other kids distracted. It didn't look like he was having much luck there. One of Maddie's brothers—Becca could never remember which was Eli and which was Garrett, and she wasn't about to _ask—_ saw her looking and waved. Maddie waved back.

"It's still a cool story, though." Becca found herself straightening her jacket and brushing the dirt off it, and wishing her jeans didn't have that rip in the knee Shel hadn't found time to fix.

"I guess so." She paused to take a few more carefully measured shots into the herd below. Becca followed suit, pleased to see that her aim kept improving. The herd was beginning to thin out, she thought, at least on this side of the building. All the dead walkers had begun to form natural barricades, tripping up the ones shuffling in from the rear and making it hard to get an accurate count.

"At least there's somebody here my age now," Maddie added, setting her crossbow aside to crack her knuckles. "Somebody...you know, okay, I mean. Daphne's weird; she doesn't count."

"If you want _weird_ , you should meet Russell."

"Is that the guy who tried to take a swing at Troy? Freak."

Becca wasn't sure if Maddie meant Troy or Russell or both. "What about Sarah?" Somewhere behind them, something metal had started to creak. Maybe the herd on that side had knocked over a truck.

Maddie picked up her crossbow again, counting out the remaining bolts and frowning. Becca caught a glimpse of a charm bracelet on her wrist. Half the charms had broken off, leaving empty clasps behind. "Her dad never lets her do anything. I think she's scared of her own shadow or...I don't know. She doesn't count either."

Becca thought back to one of the first things she'd seen on reaching the rooftop: Sarah sitting in the fetal position next to one of Maddie's brothers, her hands over her ears even though the shooting hadn't started yet. Her father had been crouched nearby, trying to calm her down maybe. Shel had murmured something sympathetic as they went by, because of course she did. Gary, following them, had just laughed.

"I guess you're right."

An echoing crash—followed shortly by the boom of a shotgun—somewhere below and behind them made Becca jump. The shot she'd been taking went wild. Maddie didn't even twitch. "Shit," she sighed, grabbing her spare bolts from the ground. "They must've breached."

On the opposite side of the roof, Johnny was screaming for back-up. Becca grabbed the spare few bullets she had left and scrambled to her feet, trying to ignore the tightening knot in her stomach.

Maddie waited for her. Her whole body was like one tightly coiled spring of tension now, with no sign of her earlier friendliness. Almost as if she'd put a mask back on. "Move. We've got freaks to kill."

* * *

Shel had already run out of bullets. She threw the empty magazine down to the pavement, and was about to turn to Thérèse—her nearest neighbor—and ask if she had any bullets to spare when the security gate flew up, its clatter somehow audible over all the gunfire.

"What the fuck!" Somewhere beside her, Troy was already on his feet. His weight made the whole shelf shift sideways, a disconcerting feeling.

Shel turned her head to see a strikingly tall, dark-haired man, about her age, standing at the gate. He held the gate up with one hand, and after a second threw his other hand in the air too, eyes widening. "Fuck, Troy! Don't shoot!" Shel wished she could remember his name.

Troy shouted something back, but it was lost in a renewed burst of gunfire from the roof.

"We need a doctor!" the man shouted back. Belatedly, Shel noticed that his dark green jacket was splattered with blood on one side, though he didn't seem wounded himself. "Where's Carlos?"

Shel slid down from the shelf almost on instinct. Then she was off across the yard at a sprint, slowed only by the occasional kitschy garden statue or pallets full of fertilizer. Nick—she remembered his name now—held the gate open until she crossed inside. "I need to stop at the infirmary," she explained as it clattered shut behind them, loud enough to make her teeth rattle. "What happened?"

Nick shook his head. They both took off at a renewed jog, dodging through empty store aisles on their way to the infirmary. "It's Andy," he explained at last. "Lurkers got through and he panicked and fuck, I don't know, somebody's gun went off and... _fuck_."

Shel's lips tightened into a frown. That hardly sounded promising, though it was better than her first thought: a bite. "I'll see what I can do," she vowed—to both Nick and herself.

In the infirmary—or the cordoned off area that passed for the Howe's infirmary—she found several first aid kits waiting, stacked in a neat pile on the desk. She spared a moment to thank Carlos's incessant habit of planning ahead as she grabbed one. Nick waited on the other side of the blue tarp, fidgeting.

Her patient waited for her just inside the sales floor, alone. Andy was a middle-aged man, stick thin, and now with a bullet wound just above his left hip like an ugly flower in bloom. The people manning the barricade had dragged him through the stock room and back to the sales floor—evidenced by the slithering trail of blood left on the tile—and then left him there, closing the door tight behind him. Callous, she thought at first, but from the sounds of fighting from the next room, maybe necessary.

"Nick, right? I need your help." As she said it she was already on her knees, unpacking the first aid kit and unwinding a roll of bandages.

Nick faltered for a second, his olive skin turning a few shades paler before he nodded. "I'll try. What do you—"

"He's in shock." Andy had in fact already slipped into unconsciousness, which she thought might have been for the best. "Get his knees up and lift his shirt." To his credit, Nick did exactly as she asked, albeit with halting, hesitant motions. Blood smeared up the sleeves of his jacket as he lifted Andy's legs. Andy groaned at the movement—an unconscious reaction, nothing more.

"Have you ever done this before?" She kept her voice low and steady in an effort to keep herself calm as much as Nick. Underneath, she felt about ready to jump out of her skin.

Nick shook his head and turned another shade paler. "Have you?"

"I was an EMT once." That training, from what felt like another lifetime, was about all that was keeping her together. But she didn't mention that. "I need to stop the bleeding," she continued, motioning Nick out of her way. "Take his shoulders and help me lift him. And keep an eye on his pulse. Please." The unspoken reason _why_ hung in the air between them.

"Yeah. Sure."

Nick moved around her and to the top of Andy's head, leaning over him to get a firm grip on his shoulders. Shel held the bandages in one hand, her other in position—and already coated past the wrist in fresh blood—under Andy's hip. Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw the door to the stock room swing open, but she didn't dare take her attention off her patient to check. Old habits were falling back in place.

"On three," she said, and counted down for them both. On the final _three_ they both lifted at once, rolling Andy over just far enough for her to get the gauze into position on the entry wound. He was heavier than she might have expected, all unconscious dead weight. As they set him back down, Nick leaned back and pressed two blood-stained fingers to his neck, checking for a pulse. He met her eyes and nodded. _Still hanging on._

She told herself that was a good sign as she tied the bandage off around his waist, as tight as she dared. "We can move him to the infirmary now, and then you need to find a way to get Carlos down here. I need his help." A few dark drops of blood had already started to leak through the gauze; Shel slid her hand back under his hip to apply more pressure. "Look around for anything we can use as a gurney, or—"

The rest of her words were cut short by the sharp retort of a handgun, fired so close to her face she could feel the heat from it scald her cheek. In the same instant a good chunk of Andy's face just _disappeared_ , and in its place a visceral mist of blood and brain and bone sprayed across her legs, the floor, Nick.

Shel was too shocked to even move. She looked up, her ears still ringing such that she couldn't hear more than a vague echo. She felt her jaw working, trying to form words, but no sound came out. At least not that she could hear.

Carver stood above them with a gun in his hand, dark clothes splattered with blood, eyes wide and wild like she'd never seen them before. He looked _feral_ , and it made her recoil in sheer, instinctual terror. She slipped in Andy's blood as it pooled on the floor and went skidding back across the tile. Her pants were soaked through in an instant. All the while Carver was shouting something at both of them, but all she could hear were some blurry noises in the semblance of words.

When she didn't respond—still frozen in shock—he reached down and pulled her up by her armpits. Her sneakers slipped in the blood and her legs flailed, fighting for purchase, but Carver didn't seem to care. He holstered his gun but kept hold of her by the back of her sweatshirt with his other hand.

" _Get the fuck back on the line_!" The words were muddled still, but he'd shouted them in her ear. Loud enough for her to hear.

Without waiting for a reply—not that she could have mustered one—he rounded on Nick next, hauling him to his feet with his free hand. Nick, who'd grown very pale and still, lurched to his feet and looked for a moment like he might just be sick.

When Carver tried to push them forward into the loading dock, that was when Shel finally found her strength again. Her feet still found little traction, so she latched onto the door frame for support, twisting in Carver's iron grip. "He was _still alive_! I could've saved him!"

Carver regarded her for what felt like the longest moment. His face was so still and blank she wasn't sure he'd heard her at all. Then he pulled her forward until there was almost no space between them. She tried to back away, but Carver held her fast. His breath was hot and harsh against her ear as he hissed, "You let me be the judge of that, honey." He smelled of gunpowder and sweat and blood, and it made her stomach churn.

In the next breath he raised his head to shout at her and Nick both. "Get back on the fucking line! _That_ ain't a lost cause yet!"

He gave them a final shove forward and then stalked past them, off toward the barricade.

"We...we better do what he says," Nick said after a pause, voice as weak and shaky as she felt. He glanced back at Andy's corpse and the pool of blood on the floor and immediately seemed to regret it, turning a faint shade of green. Shel didn't even dare think about looking back.

"I don't—I mean, I left my gun—" she stammered, trying without success to wipe some of the viscera off her pants. Nick grabbed her wrist, gently, to stop her.

"My mom's up there. She'll have a spare. Come on, all right? I don't know— _Jesus._ " He stopped short, running his hand up his face. Smears of blood caught in the stubble on his cheek. "I don't know what the fuck Bill's deal is, but I don't wanna hang around."

She felt herself nod in agreement. Nick led her out to the delivery bay, where a line of people—thinner by far than when they'd started—stood behind a hastily constructed barricade of plywood and metal fencing. The walkers had managed to batter one of the bay doors partway down and were now spilling inside through the gap. The combined efforts of the people inside and up on the roof were only just holding them back.

Bodies, mostly walkers but a few otherwise, littered the floor amid a host of shell casings. The air was hazy with gun smoke. Carver was there too, she saw, trying to keep the line from collapsing back into a panicked retreat. She put her back to him and pretended she couldn't hear him shouting.

Nick brought her around to the opposite side of the line, where a middle-aged woman with her sleeves rolled up past her elbows was barking orders to the people around her. In between, she kept firing on the incoming walkers with lethal precision.

"Mom?" Nick ventured in a brief pause in the action. For a moment he sounded far, far younger than he was.

The woman took one look at them and frowned, faltering for an instant. She stopped firing. "Nick? The hell happened?" Though she was far shorter than Nick—her head didn't even come up to his shoulder—the family resemblance was clear. She had the same thick dark hair, pulled back into a tight bun to reveal some gray at the temples, and the same striking blue eyes. Though hers had a harder, more wearied edge to them, especially now.

Nick glanced at her, then back at Shel, his shoulders slumping. "Andy, uh...he didn't...I'll tell you later."

Her lips pressed into a thin line. "Damn." She seemed about to say something more but then changed her mind, turning to fire a few more rounds at the walkers instead. Each one struck home, and Shel jumped at every single shot.

"This is Shel," Nick continued, squeezing her shoulder awkwardly. "She needs a gun and just...look, just keep her safe, okay? I gotta find Luke. They're gonna make the run out to the mine any minute."

His mother's frown deepened at that. "Nicky, I meant what I said. You aren't going. And you can tell Luke he ain't going either." She seemed to consider the matter settled with that and turned back to the line again.

Nick faltered, starting to protest, but changed his mind. "Yeah. Sure. I'll catch up with you later, Mom. Just...look out for Shel."

"I will if you look out for yourself," she answered, but Nick was already gone by then. His mother paused to reload her pistol and then passed it over to Shel. Shel took it on auto-pilot. Exhaustion was starting to creep in now that the adrenaline was wearing off.

"Spare clips are over here," Nick's mom explained, indicating with a nod of her head. She picked up a spare gun from her feet and checked to make sure it was loaded. Some of her dark hair escaped out of its bun and fell across her face. "Shel, right? Well, Shel, you about look like a corpse yourself. Take a sec, catch your breath. I got you covered."

"Thanks." Though at that moment Shel thought if she paused for a breath she'd just burst into tears. The shock was starting to wear off. She almost wished it wouldn't.

"Name's Amanda, by the way," the other woman added as a late introduction. In the same breath she lined up a shot and took it. A walker just stumbling into the building toppled backwards and fell, most of its jaw disappearing into a black and red mess.

* * *

Russell had no idea why he'd been volunteered for this. Or why he was actually going through with it. _Still better than staying on the line_ , he thought, or at least it was with the way things had been going. They'd gone from twenty people down to seven or eight after the walkers breached the building.

Then again, thosepoor bastards weren't running headlong into what was left of the herd. He swung his fire axe, felt it connect with something pulpy, pulled it out and swung again. Five feet to the pick-up truck, and it felt more like five miles. Most of the herd was behind him, distracted by all the noise Howe's was making, but a few stragglers had decided he made a more tempting target.

Jason was ahead of him, in the truck cab already and struggling to slam the door shut on a walker's hand. The guy behind him—the one supposed to be providing the covering fire—had dropped his gun instead and run almost as soon as they'd left the building. Russell had lost track of him after that, but he'd heard screaming from somewhere deeper in the herd.

He had no idea where the other two guys were, Luke and Nick. They'd been making a run for one of the other vehicles, just in case Jason couldn't get the pick-up started. Or couldn't make it that far.

Russell had an instant to hope they were okay before he had to make a quick lunge, leaping over a walker that crawled out from under the truck. A second walker snagged its rotten fingers on the hood of his sweatshirt, yanking him back and threatening to choke him. He barely had room to turn and swing the axe into its neck, spraying him with clotted blood but forcing the walker to let him go.

He tugged at the axe handle, but it was stuck fast in muscle and bone. Abandoning it, he leaped into the truck cab, slamming the door shut a second later.

" _Drive_ , man!"

"The hell d'you think I'm doing?" Jason peeled over the curb and did a quick U-turn in the muddy, half-frozen grass, sending the tires into a brief spin and covering the walkers behind them in sod. He laid on the horn the entire time and did a few donuts around the parking lot to lure in as many walkers as he could.

Russell stared out at the parking lot as it spun by; dead bodies formed a sea, a trail that led right to the door of Howe's. The remnants of the herd roiled, trying to track down the new source of sound now that Howe's guns had, for the most part, gone quiet. Jason obliged them by driving at a crawl with his hand on the horn the entire time. And with a visible _lurch_ Russell could feel in his guts, the herd began to follow.

"Man," Jason murmured, whistling through a gap in his front teeth, "it's like ringing a damn dinner bell."

All the adrenaline had left Russell at that point and he just slouched in his seat, glad for the chance to catch his breath.

They drove like that around the outskirts of Pine Creek Pass, luring in more walkers as they went. Once or twice they came across a road rendered impassable by debris or still-receding flood waters. Fortunately Jason, a long-time resident of one of the neighboring towns, knew the streets well enough to pick out a detour. Before too long they were turning into the parking lot of the town coal mine, tires crunching and scratching in the loose dirt.

On the maps Tavia's girlfriend had put together, the whole area around the mine had just been marked with a series of ominous looking Xs. _UNSAFE – AVOID_. Something about tunnel collapses creating sinkholes and undermining a whole stretch of mountainside. Some of that was true; Jason slammed on the brakes and had to veer around two sinkholes in the middle of the parking lot. As he brought the truck to a stop, Russell could hear the faint sound of sand and dirt shifting and cascading down into tunnels below. Or maybe that was just his imagination.

Jason sighed, wiping a thin sheen of sweat off his bald head. "Okay. You ready?"

Russell shrugged. Some muscles in his shoulders made tiny twinges in protest. "Let's go."

As they climbed out of the truck a second motor roared into the parking lot, accompanied by the shriek and scrape of someone driving a flat down to its rims. Luke, his clothes splattered with blood, driving an ATV. Nick was with him too, clinging to his waist. Luke waved when he spotted them, pulling to a stop beside the pick-up. Behind him the herd seemed to surge, attracted by the renewed noise.

"You folks okay?"

Jason waved back to him. "Yeah. You and Nick all right? No bites?"

Luke killed the engine and slid off the ATV, nudging the flat tire as he went. "No, no bites. We got pretty lucky." As he talked, he flashed Nick a nervous grin. "We lost a couple dozen lurkers back in town, though, so...guess we better be careful on the way back."

Jason picked a well-worn baseball bat out of the truck bed and, after a moment's thought, tossed it to Russell. "Worry about that if we make it that far, Luke. Now come on. We've got lurkers to herd."

The four of them together carried out the plan, exactly as Carver had explained it to them, or near enough. Howe's could never hope to dispose of the entire herd, and so long as they kept shooting, the walkers would keep coming. _Which is why_ , Carver had growled, jabbing the map with his pointer finger, _you're gonna_ _get rid_ _of the rest_.

The sinkholes in the parking lot were wide and deep, and stretched almost the full length of the lot with only a narrow causeway between them. Now made that much more narrow thanks to Jason driving the pick-up over it. A rusty chain-link fence, on the verge of tumbling into the sinkholes itself, circled the lot. There was room for one person to squeeze through between it and the sinkholes' edges, and not much more.

Following the sound from the vehicles, the walkers shambled forward, heedless of any danger. The momentum of the bodies behind them pushed many of them into the pit headlong. They landed with groans and crunches of bone and the occasional wet _splat_. Those that managed to find the paths around were either killed outright or, more often, prodded into falling in.

It was dirty, exhausting work, and the sun had started to disappear behind the mountain by the time they were done.

Russell almost fell in once, when a chunk of dirt gave way almost underneath him. His arms spun in a brief, panicked second of weightlessness, and then Luke grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled him back to solid ground. "Thanks," Russell breathed. It took a second for his legs to feel stable again.

Luke grinned back, wiping at his face. Sweat had plastered his ruddy brown hair to his forehead. "Anytime."

"I think that's the last of them," Jason announced, jogging back to them. The parking lot was empty save for a rising cloud of dust, stirring on a chill evening breeze. "At least all the ones that are gonna show."

"Yeah." Russell wiped his face on his sleeve and frowned at all the mud and gore that smeared off. In the darkness just under their feet, walkers snarled and shuffled, trying in vain to reach them. He thought, distantly, of the stories the guards used to tell him about the mine, but he didn't see any flickering headlamps. Just dust and darkness and a press of restless dead. "Now what?"

Luke and Jason exchanged a wary glance. "This is a bad idea," Luke began. It sounded like he was picking up the thread of an earlier, unfinished argument. "Bill wants this place sealed so bad, then...hell, he can do it himself. He's the engineer."

Jason ignored him, going back to the truck and retrieving a small lockbox from the front seat. He popped it open to show Nick and Russell the contents: two packets of C4, a tangled mess of wires, and a detonator. Russell recoiled on sheer instinct.

"Where the fuck—"

Jason had already started hooking up wires with careful focus, like he was working from rote memorization. "Same place we got all those semi-autos."

"Gary," Luke supplied helpfully, frowning as he said it.

Russell hadn't met Gary, the man in charge of the armory, except in passing. He claimed to be an ex-Army Ranger, although the rumor was that he'd never made it much higher than private. Either way, he'd been at Howe's almost since the start, and he'd brought a hefty stock of guns and ammunition—and a few other surprises—with him from his old base. That alone had been enough to endear him to Carver and George.

"We shouldn't even have that around," Luke continued. He folded his arms tight across his chest, either in defiance or in response to the rapid drop in temperature. "It could've taken out half the building if somebody handled it wrong."

"It didn't, and this is all of it. I'd rather use it than leave it sitting around, wouldn't you?" Jason's voice stayed quiet and steady as he connected the last wire. He cradled the lockbox like it was a baby. "We'll be fine, so quit your fussing."

Luke's frown only deepened. "You're a fire marshal. D'you even know how to use that?"

"I know a hell of a lot more than you do, farmboy." Jason glanced up, his dark eyes meeting Russell's. "Russ, you take the truck out to the street."

Nick, who'd been watching them silently until now, cleared his throat. "I'll cover you, Jase."

"Appreciate it. Luke?"

Luke and Nick exchanged looks. It seemed to Russell as if there was some sort of silent argument taking place, a back and forth conducted through pointed looks and vague shoulder shrugs. "Fine," Luke said finally. "Let's go."

The two of them followed Jason as he made his way, inching and delicate, across the lot to where the mine's entrance loomed like an open, black maw. It had been blocked off by a heavy metal barricade at one point but someone or something had ripped that away. Now it hung on one rusty hinge, turning lazily in the breeze. Beyond that would be the dark, sloping main shaft of the mine, leading down to whatever was left of the coal beds. And whatever might be lurking _in_ them.

Russell didn't think he'd ever be more glad to be left behind. While the others crept their way towards the mine, he climbed back into the pick-up and tried to coax it into starting. It took a few tries before the ignition finally caught with a begrudging rattle. The gas tank hedged on empty too, but it should be enough to get them back to Howe's.

He watched through the rearview mirror as Jason disappeared beyond the lip of the mine. Nick followed him inside while Luke stayed outside, pacing restlessly. Russell didn't wait for them to reappear before he steered the truck back across the causeway and out to the relative safety of the street. The road was empty and growing darker by the second; he flicked the headlights on.

A moment later a movement in the rearview mirror caught his attention. Jason and Nick had reappeared, Jason uncoiling the last of the detonator wire behind him. He made some signal to Nick and Luke and they broke off, heading for the truck at a fast jog.

Nick scrambled into the truck bed over the rear bumper, while Luke hopped in the passenger side door. "Be ready to drive," he said between pauses for breath. "And, uh, you might wanna cover your ears."

"What about Jason?"

"Said he'll be with us in a sec."

Russell shifted the truck out of park before he put his hands firmly over his ears. Luke did the same, and they both peered into the side mirrors, waiting.

When the explosion came—without a single note of warning—it was enough to shatter the truck's rear window, sending glass raining down over their shoulders. Russell barely heard it over the high-pitched, ringing whine in his ears. A stinging pain on the side of his palm and a faint, warm trickle of blood told him the flying glass had sliced his hand open. He couldn't see it; his vision had been reduced to a few bright, bursting spots from the fireball. It took everything he had not to slam his foot over to the accelerator and get the hell out of there.

Dust—dark and dirty and stinking of coal—enveloped the truck in a matter of seconds, and under the tires the ground still hadn't stopped shaking. If anything it seemed like it was getting worse.

The next thing Russell knew, Nick had reached in through the broken rear window, shaking his shoulder and screaming at him to _drive, just fucking drive_! He coughed almost between every syllable, choking on dust.

Russell didn't have to be told twice. He slammed on the gas so hard that the tires spun out and burned a little before they caught enough traction to send them flying forward. They were two streets and half a mile away before he braked again. The air was still rife with coal dust, even that far out. "Shit. What about Jason?" He glanced in the rearview mirror, just in case he'd jumped into the truck unnoticed. But he could only see Nick, clinging to the side of the truck for dear life.

Luke had pulled his sweater up over his mouth to better breathe through the dust, and he tugged it back down briefly, his expression grim. "We've gotta go back." There were streaks of fresh blood on the back of his neck; the spray of glass must have caught him, too.

They drove back at a crawl; the closer to the mine they got, the thicker the dust. Russell turned on the truck's high beams, which helped a little, but by the time they reached the turn-in for the parking lot it didn't cut through the dust so much as just highlight it a little. "Luke, you see anything?" He had his face pressed against the cracked windshield. All he could make out were a few vague, dark shapes that disappeared and reappeared with the shifting of the wind.

"No." Luke started to cough and pulled his sweater back up over his nose and mouth. "I can't...not a thing."

Nick stuck his head back through the broken window then. He'd covered his mouth with his sleeve, and Russell could barely understand him through it. A layer of gray-black dust had washed out all the color in his clothes and skin. "The explosion set off the sinkholes or something," he shouted around a cough. "I'm gonna go take a look." He was gone before anyone could object, with a noisy scramble and a shifting weight in the truck.

"Nick, _fuck—_ " Luke had just opened the passenger door when Russell grabbed his arm, yanking him back inside. He had a sudden, wild fear of being left alone with nothing but the dust for company.

"Give him a second, man. He'll be back." _I hope_. And assuming they could even wait for him that long. The truck's engine had already started to whine; it didn't like the dust any more than they did.

It took what felt like a small eternity for Nick to make it back to the truck. He didn't climb so much as collapse into it, using the last of his strength to slide over the side. He sprawled across the bed and didn't move for so long that Russell started to worry. Then he coughed, a deep, wracking cough that made Russell's ribs ache in sympathy.

"Nick, where's—" Luke began, poking his head out the window, but Nick cut him off with a tired shake of his head.

 _Well. Fuck._ Russell and Luke exchanged hasty glances, both thinking the same thing but neither wanting to be the one to come out and say it. "We...we should get back," Russell ventured. The truck engine shifted into a higher, angrier whine. They might end up walking back pretty soon. "You know. Tell Bill."

Luke weighed that thought for a second, rubbing the back of his head. His fingertips came away a little bloody, and he winced. "Yeah. He'll send somebody out to look for Jason. You know, in case...yeah. Yeah. Drive."

Russell started back down the street again, as fast as he dared in the gathering gloom and smoke, and tried to plot a route back to Howe's from memory. Some dry, wrenching coughs aside, they said not one word on the trip back.


	7. Dead Wake

**Notes:**...oops. I have no explanation for why this chapter took over a year to escape the editing/rewriting hell-cycle it found itself trapped in, only apologies.

* * *

 **7\. Dead Wake**

Shel's right ear was still ringing faintly, a low hum that preyed on her nerves. She rubbed it with her thumb as she left the infirmary, a loose bundle of bed sheets clutched in her other hand. _There's probably no permanent damage_ , Carlos had said when he'd had a spare second to look at it. She supposed she should be relieved. Mostly she wasn't sure how she could still be standing upright when she felt this bone-weary.

She fought down another yawn, making sure to hold the sheets as far from her clothes as she could manage. They were destined to be turned into bandages in short order. And her clothes, if anything, were more blood-stained than before. When the siege—as Carver insisted on calling it—had lifted, she and Carlos had both gone to work and hadn't stopped for much more than a breath since. The evening and much of the night had disappeared into an exhausting monotony of patching up cuts and the occasional burn and, at Carver's insistence, inspecting everyone for hidden bites.

Shel counted herself lucky that she hadn't found any. As it was she still caught herself glancing over her shoulder, half expecting to see Carver waiting there, gun in hand.

There was coal dust clinging to her sweatshirt now too, from when she'd hugged Russell. He'd staggered back from the mine well after dark with a cut on his hand that had badly needed stitches. Luke had a similar, shallower cut on the back of his head, just below the hairline. And Nick had inhaled so much dust Carlos gave him one of their remaining inhalers to try and help clear his lungs. They all had a ringing in their ears to rival hers, but at least they'd come back at all. The same couldn't be said for two of the five volunteers Carver had sent out.

Yes, it had been a long night—for everyone—and it wasn't over yet. Around the time Russell had shuffled back out of the infirmary, carrying a promise to check on Becca for her, Tisha had brought Cassidy in. She'd gone into labor, two weeks before Carlos had thought she was due.

The only reason Shel was leaving now was because Carlos had forced her out. Maybe because she'd started swaying on her feet, or maybe he'd grown tired of her jumping at every unexpected noise. Besides, Cassidy's condition was in something like a holding pattern for now; it might be hours before he'd need her again. _Rest_ , he'd instructed her with a now-familiar mix of warmth and firmness.

She'd picked up the sheets instead. A project was just what she needed. And despite the weariness that had crept into her every muscle and joint and the space behind her eyes, she didn't dare close her eyes. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

Outside the infirmary, the surviving residents of Howe's had more or less collapsed into sleep. _Lucky for them_ , she thought as she walked. Only a few lanterns or flashlights drifted around the living quarters, or up the stairs to Carver's office. The blinds there were drawn, but yellow lamplight blazed out through the gaps. Shel turned her attention away and shuffled toward a wooden bench, its varnish half peeled off, that someone had dragged in from the garden center. It sat tucked away in a quiet corner, but near enough to the infirmary that she could hear if Carlos or Tisha called for her. And, conveniently, it put the smear of blood and gore by the stock room out of her line of sight.

She hadn't realized just how much her feet and lower back ached until she sat down and let herself relax—or try to, if only for a minute. Muscles twinged painfully, and she let herself slump against the back of the bench, hoping to ease some of the strain.

Across the way, Amanda Randall had sprawled on another empty bench, using her blood-stained jacket for a pillow. She looked paler and older than Shel remembered her, and somehow smaller. She was fast asleep, looking about as dead to the world as Shel felt.

One of her arms dangled off the bench, down to where her son Nick had ended up. He sat with one leg tucked up near his chest, the other stretched out in front of him, and clutching his shoulder almost like it was wounded. Shel wondered if maybe he'd pulled a muscle and hadn't told anyone. He was covered head to toe in dust still, but Shel didn't think he minded all that much. He had his cap tugged down over his eyes, and from the way his head slumped forward he had to be deeply asleep.

Amanda's hand reached down to his other shoulder and clutched it so tight her knuckles had nearly turned white.

Stifling a yawn, Shel unfolded the first of the bed sheets and got to work, using a set of fabric scissors borrowed from Tisha. Her fingers ached down to the bone already, making her movements slow and clumsy. As she worked Shel found herself beginning to hyper-focus until all she could see and hear was the fabric in front of her, the unsteady movement of her hands, and the quiet creak of the scissors.

It felt like only a second later that someone cleared their throat, startling her back to reality. "Hi. ...Shel?"

She glanced up, half expecting to see Becca or maybe Bonnie. Instead she found Carlos's daughter, Sarah, standing there. Sarah was a slender, wide-eyed girl a year or so older than Becca, with an unmistakable resemblance to her father. In her hands she held two cups of what smelled like black tea. The faint steam rising from them kept threatening to fog her glasses.

As soon as she realized she had Shel's attention, she held out one of the mugs. "Here." She spoke so softly Shel almost had to strain to hear her. "I thought...I thought maybe it would help. Daphne said it was okay," she added as a hasty afterthought.

"Thank you, sweetie," Shel murmured, her hands curling around the mug in an instant. At that moment, nothing in the world felt better than the gently warmed porcelain. "This is perfect."

Sarah's smile was bright and faintly crooked, the sort of thing that would have been contagious under normal circumstances. "You're welcome." After a hesitant pause, she held out the second mug. "Could you take this to my dad? He doesn't like me being in the infirmary when...you know."

 _When he has patients_. Shel could understand that, especially now of all days. "Of course." Before she talked herself into standing up—all the muscles in her back started to ache at the mere thought—she took a single sip of tea. It wasn't very strong, but the warmth soothed all the same.

"I'll be right back." She set the sheets aside and stood up, resisting the urge to stretch. She was more likely to pull a muscle than anything right now.

"Are you making bandages? Can I help?"

"I'm trying to," Shel said, sighing, and stole another sip of tea. "Did your father ever show you how to do this?" When Sarah nodded, she continued, "Then if you don't mind, I'd sure appreciate it."

When she returned a few minutes later, Sarah was sitting on the bench with her feet tucked neatly under her, working her way through the sheet. The messy pile of bandages Shel had started was now a prim stack on the floor, folded with the precision of a military nurse.

"Your father says thank you, and that he loves you very much," Shel said, retaking her seat. Sarah's whole face brightened, "but that you should've gone to bed hours ago." For a brief instant, she spared a thought for Becca and hoped she was tucked safe in her bunk, sound asleep. _I'll check on her, just as soon as I get a chance_.

"I know," Sarah murmured, her head bent over the sheet. Her red-rimmed glasses slipped down her nose; she pushed them back up with her finger. "He's always worried about me."

"It's a parent thing. He can't help it." Shel took a few more sips of her tea before she picked up the other end of the sheet and started back to work, now using a pair of surgical scissors. "But he is right, you know."

"He usually is."

Shel thought Sarah sounded exhausted, but that might have been the haze of her own fatigue creeping in again. "I can finish here if you want to go to bed," she offered.

Sarah at once shook her head and turned every last ounce of her attention to the task at hand, as if she focused on it hard enough that would put an end to the conversation. Only after a long pause did she admit, in a voice so quiet Shel had to learn in close to hear her, "I can't sleep. I tried, but I...I really can't. I'm scared."

Shel softened at that, sighing against the mug as she took another drink of tea. "You aren't the only one. Everyone's scared out of their minds right now."

Sarah looked up at her with a curious tilt of her head. "Even my dad?"

"Even him." When she closed her eyes she could still see the stricken look on Carlos's face when he'd found a bite one of the guards had tried to hide. "He's just putting on a brave face so he doesn't frighten you. Or his patients. There's nothing wrong with being scared, Sarah. If you _weren't_ scared, then I think I'd be worried."

She set the scissors aside as she mulled that concept over. "But people like Carver and Maddie don't seem scared either," she murmured, her forehead scrunched in confusion. "Are they just trying to be brave, too?"

Shel felt her whole body flinch. Every time she thought of Carver now she pictured him as he'd been standing over her, gun in hand. She took another sip of tea to stall her answer: "Yes." _I don't know, and I think that scares the hell out of me._

"Oh." Sarah pushed her glasses back up her nose again as she tried to process that. Finally, having come to an unspoken conclusion, she picked her scissors back up again. "It's okay if I stay, right?"

"Of course." Shel smiled for the first time in what felt like days. "I could use the company."

Sarah smiled back, a little less shyly this time. "So could I."

* * *

Bonnie sat on the edge of Cassidy's cot and gently rocked her newborn girl—Leah—in an attempt to stop her fussing. Leah, not having much of that, stayed just on the verge of breaking out into real tears, her red, wrinkled face scrunching in something like confused distress.

"I know," Bonnie murmured to her, "I ain't your mama. She just needed to close her eyes for a bit." Though even as she said it Cassidy sat up again, albeit slowly and with a certain exhausted stiffness.

Bonnie had come into the infirmary near sunrise, hoping to get a bandage for a scrape that ran the length of her pinky finger—she'd snagged it on one of the armory's supply cabinets, of all things. Instead she'd found Carlos passed out in a folding chair, Tisha asleep on one of the cots, and Shel and Sarah near to comatose on a bench outside. Cassidy had been the only one awake, if just barely, singing her daughter to sleep. Bonnie found the bandage on her own—in his exhaustion, Carlos has left the supply cabinet unlocked—and then sat with her, figuring someone ought to keep her company.

"Looks just like her mama," Bonnie observed, smiling. Leah's skin was still an angry red from the birth, but it was already starting to darken and looked like it might soon match her mother's umber skin. She had a hint of her mother's button nose too, Bonnie thought.

Cassidy shook her head, sending a few of her short, dark dreadlocks flicking back and forth. "Nah. She looks more like her daddy." Her alto voice was still thin and hoarse, and when she spoke it grew hoarser still.

Bonnie was never quite sure what had happened to Cassidy's boyfriend. She wasn't sure anyone knew, for that matter. This was the first time she'd ever heard her mention him, even in passing. Cassidy was a tall, strikingly beautiful woman, just shy of thirty, with a long, aristocratic face—marred only by that cute button nose and a scar running the full length of her right cheek. And she usually had a standoffish attitude to match her looks. She didn't talk about whatever she'd been through before she came to Howe's, boyfriend included, and she kept mostly to herself.

Bonnie smiled again, rearranging the swaddling blankets when Leah flailed a chubby arm out of them. "You're gonna have to tell her about him."

"Yeah. Guess I will."

"You want to hold her again? Seems like she might settle better with you."

Cassidy shook her head, stifling a yawn with her slender hand. "In a minute. I'm afraid I might just drop her."

She'd just started to drift back to sleep when the tarp flew open and Carver strode in, George following close at his heels. "Fuck's sake, Bill," George was saying, his voice hushed and strained. "We'll figure something out, all right? Just let everybody catch their breath first."

Leah wailed once at the intrusion, trailing off into a wary whimper, which drew both men's attention. "Would you look at that," George murmured, his face breaking into a warm but weary grin. "You see? I told you I heard a baby crying." Carver, his attention already elsewhere, waved him off. George moved closer to Cassidy's bedside. "Hell, guess this means congratulations, Cass. You mind if I hold him?"

"Her," Cassidy corrected. She signaled Bonnie with a faint nod. "Go ahead."

Bonnie passed the baby into George's broad, waiting arms as carefully as she could. Leah scrunched up her little face again as if to start crying in earnest but then changed her mind, relaxing into a few wordless burbles instead. George beamed right back at her, some of the lines leaving his face for an instant. Bonnie had always thought he was the sort of man who'd desperately wanted to be a father but never quite managed to get around to it.

"What's her name?"

"Leah. After her grandmother." Cassidy sat up still, watching him with dark, wary eyes.

George continued to fuss over the baby while Carver surveyed the infirmary, grumbling under his breath about the mess. He nudged Carlos awake with a rather ungentle kick to his shoes. "You always leave the supply cabinet open? Get the fuck up." His voice was even more hoarse than usual, starting to crack from sheer exhaustion.

"Bill," George chided, "I'd bet you anything there's not a soul in this building awake besides us. No one's in the mood for petty theft."

By then, George had managed to completely block Bonnie's view. She could have leaned around him she supposed, but then she might also just tip over and pass out from sheer exhaustion. She heard rather than saw the scrape of metal on tile as Carlos got to his feet.

"I don't remember inviting you in." Carlos's voice was heavy with sleep, and it made his accent even thicker than usual.

" _I_ don't remember needing an invitation into my own infirmary," Carver replied, his voice sharpening to a narrow point. "Last thing I need right now is your damn holier-than-thou bullshit. Just do your fucking job."

Something in the air seemed to draw itself in tight and hold its breath. George shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and the scuff of his boots on the floor almost made Bonnie wince. In his arms, Leah whimpered.

"You're not welcome in here any longer. Not after you murdered one of my patients."

 _Murder_? Bonnie glanced over to Cassidy. Both of their brows had arched up, as if asking the same question.

"Carlos, now just hang on—" George's plea, however, fell on deaf ears.

"You've got some fucking nerve." If Carver's voice got any rougher Bonnie thought it might just turn to gravel. He'd started to pace back and forth; she watched him, and watched the brown splatters of blood on his coat, the weary drag of his feet. "I keep you— _and_ your daughter—alive. More than that, I keep you safe. And this is how you decide you're gonna repay me?"

"Sarah has nothing to do with—"

"Will you let me fucking finish? That's about the least you can do."

Carlos sighed. "Fine. Say your piece."

"Andy was dying. And when he died, he was gonna turn and take out the throats of the folks helping him. You want to explain to Becca why you had to put her sister down? Or tell Amanda you got her only child killed? You want to lose the only trained help you got because you don't know when to cut your fucking losses?"

By the end, Carver's voice had risen perilously close to a shout. It was enough to startle Leah awake and make her cry. George turned away to shush her, rocking her in his arms. He either ignored or didn't see Cassidy motion for him to hand her back. On the other side of the room, Tisha finally stirred awake. "Bill? Carlos? What..."

Bonnie's eyes darted back and forth between them in the silence that followed. She didn't want to see a fight break out, but also didn't think she could dare intervene. _You only know half the story_ , she told herself with a steadying breath. _Getting in the middle could just make it worse._ She glanced over at Cassidy, who shrugged, looking about as lost as she did.

"You crossed a line," Carlos said at last. Fatigue undermined the defiant edge to his voice. "In fact, you crossed several. But this is neither the time nor place for this conversation. For now, you've said your piece and I've said mine. Now please—" somehow the word sounded like it was forced from him— "go. As you so...aptly pointed out, I have an infirmary to clean."

Carver didn't move. Something in his stiff, defiant posture reminded Bonnie of a pot, seconds from boiling over. Or maybe she'd been stuck on too many kitchen shifts with Vera. "Bill," she tried, hesitating and soft. "Bill, when's the last time you got any sleep?"

George heard her at least and quickly latched on. "You're coming up on about three days, aren't you?" Something in his tone implied he already knew the answer.

"Something like that," Carver admitted after a moment. "Not your concern. I'll be fine."

Carlos seemed poised to offer some medical input but, perhaps wisely, stopped himself. He turned his attention to the supply cabinet instead. Tisha stumbled to her feet to help him, hiding a yawn behind her hand.

"That's what I thought." George finally handed Leah, now dozing again, back to her mother. Cassidy's arms circled around the baby, protective, and something in the hard edge of her jaw suggested she wouldn't be letting go anytime soon. "C'mon, Bill. You can go back to harassing the troops once we've had some shut eye."

"Couple things I gotta take care of first."

George sighed, shrugging his broad shoulders in something like defeat. Behind him, supplies rattled as they found their way back into the cabinet.

Carver turned to go—and then stopped, rounding on Bonnie. On instinct, she sat up straighter and looked him square in the eye. He looked exhausted; pale and gaunt and somehow small. "Bonnie, you and Gary dealt with the armory any?"

"Started to." The cupboards verged on bare, but he didn't need to hear that just now. Or the fact that she had no idea where Gary had disappeared to. She hadn't seen him since this morning. Passed out, drunk or sober, in a corner somewhere was her best guess. "I just needed a bandage, but—I'll get right back to it."

"See that you do. I want a full inventory tomorrow and a solid plan for how we're gonna restock what we lost." He waited for her to nod and then was gone, pushing one of the wall dividers aside with a screech of metal on tile. Everyone winced.

* * *

Maddie woke Becca up with one sharp shake of her shoulder. Becca grumbled and tried to twitch away, but she had a grip like steel. " _What_?" She wondered what time it was. It didn't feel like she'd slept long.

"Work to do. C'mon."

She waited until Becca had sat up and gotten her feet out of the sleeping bag before she let go. "Bring a jacket or something."

Becca fumbled for her sneakers, trying to will her eyes open more than halfway. As she tied the laces, she glanced over at Shel's sleeping bag. Empty—and tidy, the way she made it every morning. Either she was already up or she'd never made it to bed. "Have you seen my sister?" One bunk farther on, Vera was snoring face-down into her pillow.

Maddie shrugged. "Passed out by the infirmary, I think. Let's go."

Shuffling along in Maddie's wake, Becca followed through the small maze of cots and sleeping bags and into the stock room. A weak sort of daylight trickled in through the broken bay door. Someone was already hard at work; all the bodies she'd seen last night were gone, cleared away somewhere. Though the floor was still a mess of blood and viscera and shell casings. Becca's nose wrinkled at the wet, cloying smell. Thérèse and Alvin, with bandanas covering their faces to block out the smell, were just starting to mop up the worst of it. They moved sloppy and slow, almost like the walking dead themselves. Maddie passed them by without so much as a nod and slipped sideways through the gap in the bay door. Becca followed at her heels.

Outside they found another, grimmer story altogether.

The parking lot was still a veritable sea of bodies. They sprawled, hap-hazard, everywhere Becca looked. But most of them seemed to surround the building, particularly the loading dock, like some great low sea wall.

Sometimes she could've sworn the wall twitched. Or groaned.

"I didn't realize we killed so many," she wondered aloud.

"Probably a third of the herd. Maybe more. We got lucky. If Bill hadn't come up with that plan with the mine..." Maddie shrugged, miming shooting herself in the head. "Let's go."

"We got fucked, you mean," said a man's voice beside and below Becca, making her jump. She glanced down to see Gary, the creep Bonnie always got stuck working with. He was sitting with his back against the concrete, his knees tucked up near his chest. A glass bottle poked out from his lap. "Straight up fucked. Without the lube." Becca and Maddie both made disgusted faces over his head. Not even looking at them, he picked the bottle up and took a long drink. He hadn't shaved in a few days and the circles under his eyes were heavier than usual, even in the dim morning light.

"It's not that bad," Maddie replied with a dismissive sort of sniff. "We're still alive."

Gary laughed until he began to cough into his ragged jacket sleeve. "Speak for yourself." He held the bottle aloft to Becca. His arm swayed and shook and threatened to spill its dark contents over her shoes. "Hey, kid. You want any?"

Becca, her eyes widening, backed up a step without saying a word. He shrugged. "Your loss. And none for you, Madness," he slurred, pulling the bottle close again. "You're a fucking snitch."

"Beats being a drunk," Maddie shot back, deadpan. "Becca, let's _go_."

Near the middle of the parking lot—where the molotovs had hit yesterday morning—she saw human figures moving in the dim, gray light. They were dragging dead walkers into a great big pile.

"Here." Maddie motioned toward a path someone had clear cut through the bodies. "Watch your ankles. I saw one still moving over there."

She pointed, but Becca wasn't looking. Cold pricked at her fingers, sharp and damp, and her breath iced in the air in front of her. At least the faint coating of frost lessened the smell. She tugged her sweatshirt sleeves down around her hands and followed Maddie, resisting the urge to hug herself for warmth. As they walked she heard a faint patter of small, running feet behind her. She glanced back to see Maddie's brothers, Eli and Garrett, sprinting after them. Their breath frosted in the air in quick, wispy puffs. She waved with one awkward twitch of her hand. The one with the birthmark on his cheek waved back. They were both wearing thin woolen gloves and coats about two sizes too big.

At the parking lot's center, Johnny, Wyatt, and a few of the other guards were carting bodies into a massive pile. It looked like back-breaking work; Johnny had stripped down to a thin beige t-shirt despite the cold air, and Wyatt's long hair was plastered to the back of his neck with sweat. As Becca watched, one of the other guards—Stan, she thought—crawled up the pile to splash some gasoline over the top.

"What are we doing out here? I can't lift a whole body." Becca paused, then amended, "Probably. I bet I could if I tried." Walkers were dead, with bits of themselves falling off all the time. They couldn't be _that_ heavy.

"We're searching the bodies before they get burned." Maddie stopped at a clear spot in the parking lot to tug on a pair of gloves. "Some of the fresher ones might have ammo on them. Maybe some other supplies if we're lucky. And pull off any clothes you think we can use, too."

She handed Becca a pair of thick leather gloves—they were several sizes too big, and smelled vaguely of hay and manure. As soon as Becca had pulled the first one on, Maddie pulled a small black knife out of a sheath on her boot and handed that over, too. "If you catch any still moving, put them down. Right through the eye, all the way to the hilt. Got that?"

Becca twirled the knife between her fingers. The gloves made her grip extra awkward and unwieldy. "Got it."

"Good. We'll start here and work our way back to the building. Eli, Garrett, take the ones heading out to the road."

The boys brushed past Becca at a jog, almost elbowing her to the ground in the process. Becca herself still stood twirling the knife, her gaze moving from one dead walker to the next and then the next. Maddie watched her, seeming confused.

"You never looted the dead freaks before?"

Becca shook her head no. Roman or Vince or Shel had always taken them away to burn as soon as they were dead. Dead _again_.

"Your sister never taught you?" When Becca shook her head no again, Maddie frowned. "Wow. What _did_ she teach you?"

Becca thought on that for a long minute before she came up empty. "How to stitch a wound?"

Maddie either didn't hear her or just didn't care. "It's not like it's hard. You just have to make sure they're really dead before you start." She bent to examine her first body, rolling it over onto its back with her foot while she tied her brown hair back into its customary ponytail.

That was when Wyatt, pausing to rub his face with his shirt sleeve, caught sight of them. "Becca? The hell are you...? Little bro, you better get back inside." His attempt at a stern tone was undercut by his pausing to push his glasses back up his nose. "Does Shel even know where you are?"

"She doesn't care." Technically correct was, as far as Becca was concerned, the best kind of correct. _And you're not my mom, Wyatt,_ she wanted to add. But that struck her as too childish.

"The hell she doesn't." He started forward, rolling up his sleeves. "C'mon. You're—okay, what the hell? _All_ you kids are going back inside."

That got Johnny's attention. He dropped the body he'd been dragging along by its armpits and straightened, dusting off his hands. "Leave it, Wyatt. Maddie knows what she's doing; they'll be fine." Although as he said it he caught sight of Eli and Garrett in the further distance. He frowned, pointing to them and shouting so that they could hear him. "Hold up. Not you two. Back inside."

"But—" one of them started in a distinct whine.

"This shit's too big a mess for you. _Back inside_. Go...shit, I dunno, ask somebody if they need help cleaning up."

Neither boy moved, watching Maddie expectantly. Maddie paused to think for a long moment, her thin lips pursing together. Then she inclined her head back towards Howe's. The boys frowned but did as they had silently been told, picking their way back to the building.

Satisfied, Johnny started straight back to work. Wyatt still hesitated, the lines on his face deepening the more he frowned. "I don't want the two of them out here either." He looked directly at Becca as he said it. Maddie, ignoring him, had already begun to strip one walker of his down jacket.

Johnny waved his concerns away. "Jo's out putting down the ones we missed. They'll be fine."

Becca took a second look around. Nearer to the road, a tall, dark-haired woman was moving slowly through the bodies. She walked with a pronounced limp and made heavy use of a single metal crutch. Every so often she would stop to use that walking stick like a club, bringing it down on a walker's skull with a popping noise that echoed across the lot. Even from this distance Becca could see her khakis were stained with blood and gore.

"Becca," said Maddie, huffing in impatience. "Get to work."

That settled it, at least in her mind. She put her back to Wyatt and bent to examine one of the bodies next to her, trying not to gag at the smell. Wyatt made some vague annoyed noise, but that was the end of the discussion. Figured.

It was disgusting work. Even more disgusting than she'd imagined it would be, which had been pretty gross. And it went so _slow_. It took forever to check pockets and remove shoes and boots and sometimes a jacket worth salvaging. Not that anyone would ever catch her wearing any of these cast-offs. Not now that she'd seen where they'd come from.

The sun was up over the mountaintops now, and Becca hadn't even made a full circle around the ever-growing corpse pile. Her hands were sluggish and stiff with cold, and she'd dry-heaved from the smell—and some of the grislier bodies—so many times that her throat felt raw. Maddie was working farther out, near where Jo was still circling, so she didn't even have anyone to talk to to distract her. Unless she wanted to try talking to Wyatt or Johnny, which she very much did not.

She wanted to be back inside. In her sleeping bag where it was _warm_ , and you couldn't smell the dead outside if you pulled it up tight enough against your nose.

Becca pulled her hand out of another empty, damp pocket as someone started shouting behind her. "Hey! You assholes having fun yet?"

She glanced back over her shoulder. Gary had left his seat and begun to half-straggle towards them. The bottle was still in his hand, half empty now, the dark liquid inside sloshing back and forth as he moved.

"Oh, Christ," she heard Stan mutter behind her. "Here we go."

"Just ignore him," said another guard—Reggie, she thought his name was. "He'll get bored and wander off."

"Yeah, and maybe wander into a lurker that's still got some bite left in him." As Stan said it, Gary was shouting _hey, assholes!_ again. The sound echoed back off the trees.

"We should be so lucky," Johnny grumbled. "Where does he even get that shit anyway?"

"Dunno," Stan answered in the same low tone. "But I'm starting to wish he'd share." As he said it he heaved another body onto the pyre-to-be. It was particularly decayed; Becca had skipped over it earlier because it barely had any clothes on, let alone anything of real value. Now its arm popped free of its socket and rolled down the pile, landing with a fat-sounding _plop_ on the asphalt. Becca felt her stomach lurch again and doubled over until the urge to heave subsided.

"Hey, look at the kid!" She heard laughter, high and thin and mocking, and looked up. Gary was using his bottle to point right at her—at least until he pulled it back to take a drink. "I think she's gonna hurl!" He cackled again. It reminded her of the witch in that Oz movie.

Wyatt slid between them then, blocking her view. Now all she could see was the butt of his jeans. Gross. Becca planted her foot between two very dead walkers—tried not to think about why something went _squelch_ under her sneaker—and peered around him.

"How about you leave her alone, dumbass?"

Gary waved the bottle like he was trying to push Wyatt aside. The fact that there was still ten feet between them didn't phase him much.

Behind him, Becca saw Reggiemoving towards Howe's. He jogged at a fast clip; he'd pulled himself onto the loading bay and disappeared inside by the time Gary managed to string another coherent sentence together. Everything before that had been slurred nonsense.

"Fuck off, four eyes."

" _Very_ original."

"This is still America, jackass. I can talk to her if I want."

Becca, now leaning so far around Wyatt she felt in danger of falling over, made a face. "Why would I ever want to talk to _you_? Creep."

Gary staggered backward, miming a shot to the heart. He tripped on a body and ended up sprawling backwards on the damp, bloody concrete, scotchclutched to his chest like a child. That drew some petty laughs from Johnny, who turned back to work like that settled things.

After a couple false starts, Gary pulled himself back to his unsteady feet. "You think this is fucking funny?" The words were broken up by a pause to take a long drink. "You're the fucking jokes. Kid, you wanna know a secret? You're gonna die." He spoke with such sudden, sober clarity that Becca shrank back a step, her stomach lurching again.

"He's just a drunk asshole," Wyatt muttered without turning to look at her. Some comfort. "Ignore him."

"At least I'm not a stupid drunk!" Becca shouted back, picking up Maddie's earlier insult. Somehow it sounded less impressive when she said it, stumbling and stuttering over half the words.

"We're all gonna die," Gary continued, ignoring her. "Gonna end up like Andy or Jason or the dumbasses who got bit. Dead as fuckin' doornails. And then we're gonna end up there." He pointed to the pile of bodies with a sudden aura of surety. His hand wobbled and began to tremble, but he wouldn't let it drop. Instead he swung it around to point at _her_. "But you're gonna go first, you loud-mouthed little brat—"

"Shut up, man." Wyatt's voice had a sharp edge she'd never heard before. "I'm not gonna tell you again."

Becca had the idea that she should fight back. With words or action or both, it didn't matter; she _wanted_ to fight back. But her mouth was dry as a stone, and though her hands had balled into fists her feet were rooted on the spot. _I'm not going to_ die. _That's just stupid. He's drunk like Roman that one time. Ugh. ..._ _But w_ _hat if he's right? He isn't. Is he?_ She looked around, trying to find Maddie in hopes that she'd back her up. But she was still working alongside Jo, both of them ignoring the whole situation. Becca shifted her from foot to foot, uncertainty making her feel weightless.

"You wanna go, four eyes? C'mon, I'll put us both out of our misery."

Wyatt started forward. So did Johnny, but he was reaching for the gun holstered behind his back. "All right," he growled, "that's enough bullshit outta everybody."

A rattling clang from the building distracted everyone. Bonnie had tried to leave via the broken door and tripped on the way. She steadied herself and kept moving, blushing to match her tousled hair. Reggie followed at her heels.

 _Great. Now it's an idiot party._ If only Vince were here to complete the picture.

Bonnie's appearance had an immediate, distracting effect on Gary. "Gingersnap!" He dropped one arm around her shoulders and tried to pull her into a sideways hug. Bonnie played along limply, looking like the earth would be doing her a favor if it swallowed her whole in the next minute. "Did they drag you out here just for little old me?"

"No—sorta," she admitted, trying to shrink away. "You're drunk, Gary."

"Is that what I am? Well, that explains it." He took another drink just as Bonnie made a grab for the bottle. She missed. He didn't seem to notice.

"I think you oughta come back in now." Becca couldn't tell if Bonnie was trying to be soothing or if she was just nervous. Her hand moved for the bottle again, much slower than before. "You're—" she glanced around, saw Becca— "you're spooking the kids."

"He is not!" was Becca's immediate, white-hot retort. "He's just a dumbass." Out of the corner of her eye she saw Johnny grinning. When he saw her looking he gave her a quick thumbs up.

"Well you're spooking _me_ ," Bonnie tried again, stammering. "So let's go. Before you wake up Bill or somebody and get us all in trouble."

"Aw, Gingersnap, you know I can't say no to you. Except—" he was giggling now— "except when I can."

Bonnie had her hands around the bottle by then. "You ain't even talkin' sense, Gary." She pulled, ever so gently, and it began to slip out of his grip. "I think you better go lay down." By the time she finished the sentence, she had a firm hold of the bottle. Gary, oblivious, let his hand drop to his side. His other arm was still wrapped tight around Bonnie's hunched shoulders.

"Why, Mrs. Robinson—" Becca's nose scrunched in confusion— "are you trying to seduce me?" Gary grinned, leaning forward until Bonnie's nose almost touched his. "I didn't think I was your type."

The blush crept all the way up to Bonnie's ears. She cleared her throat, passing the bottle to Reggie's waiting hand. Behind her back, so Gary couldn't see. "You really ain't," she muttered. "Get your brain out of the gutter and c'mon."

"You know damn well the gutter's where we both belong." He swung his hand like he was trying to slap her back, forgetting that his arm was still draped over her shoulders. He staggered again but didn't fall down. Becca wished he would. And stay down this time.

"You got that right, at least," Bonnie sighed. She steered him back inside, weaving her way around fallen walkers. And pausing every so often to grab Gary by the back of his jacket to stop him from tipping over. He was still talking, but Becca couldn't make out what he was saying.

"I'm—yeah, I'm just...gonna go help her." Reggie started forward, then stopped, started to set the scotch bottle down, then finally handed it off to Stan with a helpless shrug. "I'll be right back."

Stan sniffed at the bottle's contents. "The hell am I supposed to do with this?"

Johnny held his gloved hand out as an answer. "Cheers," he said when Stan handed it over, and drank long and deep. "Wyatt?" He wiped the bottle's mouth on a clean part of his sleeve and offered it out.

Wyatt, determined to ignore everything that had just happened, had already gone back to work. "Pass," he grunted, slinging another body onto the pile.

Johnny chewed on his lower lip, mulling something over. Then he jogged over to Becca, holding the bottle out for her to take. "Baby sips," he advised when she took it. "Don't you dare puke on my shoes."

The glass was surprisingly cold; she could feel its chill even through her gloves. But the liquid inside felt searing hot—it burned her lips and her tongue and all the way to her stomach, even with the tiny sip she'd taken. Her stomach churned, irritated, and she coughed a few times into her sleeve.

She tried another experimental sip as Johnny nudged her with his elbow. "Ignore that drunk son of a bitch, all right? You're doing just fine, kid."

"I know that." The raspy edge to her voice startled her. She handed the bottle back; her head was already starting to spin. Or maybe that was just her imagination. She couldn't tell.

He wiped the bottle clean again and took another drink, chuckling to himself. "Tell you what, kid. Next time, we just let Bill catch him. That'll learn him."


End file.
